LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



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NUGGETS OF GOLD; 



LAWS OF SUCCESS IN LIFE, 



IN BRIEF AND PUNGENT LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN ; 
TO WHICH IS ADDED THE SCIENCE OF ALCO- 
HOLIC MEDICATION ; ALSO THE PHIL- 
OSOPHY OF LABOR, WAGES, 
CAPITAL, MONEY AND 
WEALTH. 









y 



BY JOHN HEERMAKS. 



The finest writing is that which says the most in the 
smallest space. 



- 






CORNING, N. Y.: 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 

1880. 









Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

joeln heermans, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C, 



A. B. Potts & Co.. Printer $i Parkesburg, Pa. 



TO THE! 

YOUNG MEN OP THE UNITED STATES, 

ON WHOM, IN RAPID SUCCESSION, THE 

DESTINIES OF THIS GREAT NATION ARE DEVOLVING 

AND ON WHOSE 

PRACTICAL EDUCATION AND HABITS OF LIFE 

ITS SUCCESS 

MUST ALWAYS DEPEND, 

THIS WORK IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



WHAT IS THIS BOOK FOR? 



Whoever writes a book is presumed to have a rea- 
son for writing it, and such reason is looked for at this 
end of the book. I will therefore tell the reader how 
the matter of this book came to be written, and why 
it is presented to the public in this form. 

I am not an author by profession. My writings 
for the press, for forty years, on various subjects, have 
been chiefly amateur. I have written because I 
thought somebody ought to write such things as I 
have written. 

A call came to me to write a series of brief articles 
for publication in a local paper of large circulation, 
for the benefit of the young men of my locality. Look- 
ing out upon the condition and habits of a large ma- 
jority of the young men of the time, and looking back 
over my experience and observation of fifty years of a 
laborious life, I thought I might offer some sugges- 
tions useful to all well-disposed young men striving to 
get on in the world. 

I had not gone far in the work before the subject 
seemed to open up before me in much greater propor-. 
tions, and involving a much greater labor than I had 
anticipated, to do it reasonable justice. But having 
entered upon it, I persevered until I had discussed 
most prominent subjects in the practical affairs of life. 
And long before I got through, compliments and en-r 
comiums came to me from many sources entitled to 
respect, as to the value of the articles; and numerous 
calls have been made upon me for their publication in 
book form, for preservation, and for general circula- 
tion ; for the principles embodied in them are appli- 
cable to civilized society everywhere and for all time. 

I have read many excellent books of advice to young 
men ; but I do not remember one that comes down to 
the pith of practical life with economy of words. 
They contain too much elocutionary fine writing, too 
much elaborate discussion too far away from the heart 
of the subject in hand, too little in much, and involve 
too much reading to find what a busy young man 
wants to know. Whatever of valuable matter there 



is in these little discourses is set out in plain and 
direct language, and not hidden away in ornamental 
circumlocution. This is said to be my forte. 

I have named the book The Laws of Success in 
Life, because success can only be achieved by observ- 
ing the eternal principles therein laid down. I call it, 
also, Nuggets of Gold, because I am not too modest to 
accept the verdict of my readers that it contains large 
value in small space. 

SECONDLY. 

A second object of this book is to correct the fallacy 
that alcohol is good for sick people. It is difficult to 
convince the generality of medical practitioners that 
they have no science for the practice of alcoholic med- 
ication ; but I boldly assert here, that in the second 
part of this book I have clearly demonstrated that the 
last word of medical science is that alcohol in the 
human body is never useful, but always bad — sick or 
well. 

In view of the notorious fact that by the use of alco- 
hol for medicine by the doctors, the drug shop is 
largely the parent of the dram shop, and of the fact 
that its use is always damaging to the sick, it is of 
vital importance to the temperance cause, as well as 
to suffering humanity, that the errors of the common 
medical profession in this behalf should be every- 
where promulgated so as to get the barbarous practice 
in a course of ultimate extinction. To this end I have 
taken great care to set out the exact state of medical 
science on the subject. 

THIRDLY. 

I have long seen the need of a compact and com- 
prehensive work on the common, everyday principles 
of political economy, especially adapted to the instruc- 
tion of working men, and to correct the fallacies by 
which they are often misled by political demagogues. 
And as I have not been able to find any such work, I 
have undertaken it in part third of this book. 

Altogether, I present three books in one. And if 
my readers shall be by them in any degree instructed 
and improved, my object will be accomplished. 

J. HEEBMANS, 

Coming, N. Y., Dec, 1879. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

PAGE. 

I. — Preliminary and General, - - 9 
II. — The False and the True — in Work, 13 
III. — The False and the True — in 

Business, - - - - 18 
IY. — Accumulation — General Consider- 
ations, - 23 
V. — Accumulation — Specific, - 28 
YI. — Do Something, ... 35 

YIL — Education, 41 

YIII. — To Drink or Let it Alone, - 49 

IX.— Tobacco, 59 

X.— Gaming, 76 

XI. — On Choosing an Occupation, - 86 

XII.— Help, 93 

XIII.— Marrying, 101 

XI Y. — After Marriage— Women's Work, 118 

XY. — After Marriage — Style, - 132 

XYI. — On Running Into Debt, - - 144 

XVII. — Decision of Character, - - 149 

XVIII. — How to Invest, - 154 

XIX. — Benefactions and Charities, - 164 

XX. — On Law and Lawyers, - 180 

XXL— Tongue, 193 

XXIL— Hospitality, - - - - 199 

XXIIL— Conclusion, .... 206 

PART .SECOND. 

ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

I. — Introductory, - - - - - 208 



IL^-Its Tendency — Elementary Principles, 211 
III. — Scientific Proofs, - - - - 217 
IV. — Practical Pacts and Medical Argu- 
ments, - 235 

V. — The Other Side Considered, - - 245 

VI.— ^Conclusion, 263 

PART THIRD. 

labor, capital, money and wealth. 

I.— The Times of 1873-1878, - - 271 

II. — The Labor Problem, ... 287 

III. — Money — What it is, - - - 311 

IV. — Money — What it is Not, - - 321 

V. — Money. — Inflation not Beneficial 

to Industry, - - - 333 
YI. — Government Banking vs. National 

Banks, - - - - 341 

VII. — The Bonds and Bondholders, - - 355 

VIII. — Wealth and its Uses, - - 367 



IP-A-IEtT FIRST. 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 



LECTURE L 

PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL. 

I have seen the model young man of the period, 
with his pretty cane, his ten-cent cigar, his kid 
gloves, and all his other popinjay embellishments, all 
of which has seemed to ask me : What more is 
wanted for a perfect young man? Yes, I have 
seen that kind of young men all my life ; and I have 
seen another kind also. And I have noticed, in 
going along, the outcome of each in all that we 
call success or failure in life. 

What is success in life ? Not the amassing of 
wealth simply. I have seen men eminently suc- 
cessful in that, all through life, who were only 
miserable failures. It is not a conscientious and 
religious life simply. I have seen many men of 
that kind who were miserable failures in compari- 
son with what they might and ought to have been. 

What I take to be success in life, for the pur- 
poses of this discussion, is to make an honest 
livelihood as we go along, with reasonable invest- 
ments in all meritorious benefactions, with steady 
accumulations sufficient for reasonable indepen- 
dence all along life's journev, and a competence for 
(9) 



10 LECTURES TO YOUNQ MEN. 

old age, if we reach it, and a conscience void of 
offense toward God. The opposite of this, i. e. to 
drag along through life the slave of others because 
always behind hand and under the pressure of want, 
and to land in the poor house, or some other charity, 
at last, or to acquire money riches merely, is 
failure. 

When I was young my grandfather gave me this 
history of himself. In his young days he was of 
a roving disposition — thoughtless of the future — 
spending his earnings as he went along — having a 
good time generally, in all the frivolities and dissi- 
pations of the time. But in his travels he had 
many a time met with paupers upon the public 
charity — sometimes farmed out to the lowest bid- 
der, as we see them sometimes now-day s. Noticing , 
as we may always notice, that those people were 
often badly used, and had no rights that their 
superiors were bound to respect; looking upon 
those pictures of wasted life, as our } r oung men 
may look upon the same to-day, he discovered the 
road that he was traveling. "What," he said to 
himself, "Must I come to that some day? If I 
should live to be old and unable to work must I be 
domineered and driven about by the merest child of 
the household where public charity would place 
me ? Certainly, all this, unless I call a halt. That 
shall not be. These strong arms, with health and 
the blessing of God, can procure for me a compe- 
tence for old age, and it shall be so." 



PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL. 11 

And so it was. He put his new philosophy into 
immediate execution. He settled down to work 
and saved his earnings. Commencing as a farm la- 
borer at the scantiest wages, he so prospered that 
at the age of fifty he owned a farm that made him 
independent. All through life I have seen some of 
that kind of men in all the pursuits of life ; but I 
have seen more of the other kind — those who, 
whatever their income may be, spend it as they go 
along. I have seen them drag along through hard 
working lives, always on a strain, always " under 
the harrow," " clever fellows," perhaps, but always 
on the down hill side and more or less a burden 
upon their friends ; and not because they do not 
earn money enough, but only because they have 
not the self-denial to save some of it. For it is not 
the money that a man earns that makes him rich, 
but what he saves. 

I have noticed that class of people, too, when 
they come to old age — dependent upon public 
charity. I have heard them assert their claims 
upon the public bounty. They have done so much. 
They have always been industrious and have been 
of great value to the community, and the world 
owes them a living ; when the fact is that the world 
does not owe them a cent. If they have labored 
hard and long they have consumed all the fruits of 
that labor and more. Whatever value they have 
been of to the world, they have received value for 
value as they went along. 



12 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

These two classes of people that I have tried to 
describe comprise the bulk of mankind. Young 
man, if you are destined to be one of the world's 
producers — if your good fortune is to do some- 
thing for the privilege of being in the world — and 
if you are doing ever so much, or ever so little, you 
are starting out in the road of one or the other of 
these classes. And as your choice of these roads 
is, so will be your success or failure. Extraordi- 
naries excepted, every man with ordinary health 
through life can raise a family, keep himself above 
board all along, and accumulate a competence for 
old age. The lowest-priced men usually earn 
enough for this. And on the other hand, any man 
can keep himself in distress all his life with the 
largest income ; for it is not so much the amount 
of money that a man handles that makes him com- 
fortable, as it is the fact that he has enough at all 
times to meet all his wants, and more. 

I do not think that the accumulation of property 
is the chief end of man ; but I do say that any 
man that has not the fortitude and self-denial to 
save something is generally a failure. He has 
never much of an}^thing to contribute for the bene- 
fit of humanity — all must go to gratify his own 
morbid tastes. And his tastes are not half as well 
gratified as is his who spends not half as much, but 
is always saving something. Money is not to be 
worshiped and not to be despised. I have always 
noticed that those who sneer at the provident as 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN WORK. 13 

money worshipers, while they themselves never 
keep any of it long enough to pay it the slightest 
devotion, are the most eager to clutch the savings 
of others whenever the law will let them. 

We sometimes hear about bad financiering. "So 
and so is a bad financier and so he fails in every- 
thing." The fact is that financiering, on a small or 
large scale, is usually very simple and easy. It is 
only to not waste your money. A man makes $50 
a month, for instance, and he is fool enough to pay 
out $25 or $30 of it for nonsense ; and you call it 
bad financiering. It is not financiering at all. It 
is dissipation. Financiering is to take that money 
and put it where it will earn something. There is 
no mystery about that — anybody can do it. The 
financiering of large business establishments of any 
kind is all about as simple as that. When the 
money is allowed to be stolen or wasted in any 
way, failure ensues ; when saved and put to good 
uses, the financial part is a success. That is all 
there is of it. 

In future numbers I shall try to show, more in 
detail, how it is that men succeed or fail in their 
life work. 



II. 

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN WORK. 

"Honor and Shame from no condition rise, 
Act well your part ; there all the honor lies." 

Before entering further into the merits of this 
discussion, I must say to you, young man, that in 



14 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

starting out upon the journey of life, there are 
some things of infinitely more importance to you 
than this one matter of pecuniary success. There 
are a hundred ways to make money, or to get it 
rather, by which success in accumulation is the 
most miserable failure. Better, a thousand times 
better, to fill a pauper's grave than that of a mil- 
lionaire from such pursuits. And some of them 
are called respectable, and bear the sanction of law. 
"Life is more than meat." A true life is some- 
thing beyond the mere supplying of our daily 
wants, and any amount of accumulation. It is to do 
that in such a way as to do some good to somebody 
else ; to contribute to the common good of the 
community, so that the world will be the better for 
our having lived in it ; and not by hook or crook 
so that it will be really all, or some part of it, at 
other people's expense. 

If I cultivate the earth, and add my produce to 
the stocks in the market, or build a house that may 
shelter my fellow beings for a hundred years or so, 
or build a ship that transports surplus productions 
to distant climes, for suitable compensation, I 
contribute my quota to the common stock of 
wealth. We may say, in general, that the true 
life is, 

1st, To do something that will be of benefit to 
somebody. 

And what is this ? Not to concoct some scheme 
or ingenious device by which the unwary can be 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN WORK. 15 

induced to part with values for your benefit, 
whether lawful or not, if it does not, somehow, 
contribute to the sum of human comfort ; but it is 
something that does so contribute. For instance, 
to cultivate the earth — producing the material of 
food and raiment ; to delve in the mines — drag- 
ging out the minerals needful for our civilization ; 
the thousand manufacturing industries that pro- 
duce the innumerable commodities for the comfort 
and the rational enjoyment of mankind; the mer- 
chant who brings producer and consumer together; 
the learned professions — the gospel ministry, with 
its potent influence for the good order of society, 
to say nothing of its spirituality : the profession of 
the law, as the foundation of all civilization, with 
the officers of government as its corner-stone ; the 
medical profession with its healing arts; the public 
educators, training up the young in the learning 
of the times ; all these and any other vocations 
that go to make up the sum of human civilization 
and comfort, I need not say, are of the true and 
not the false. But the innumerable devices by 
which people are induced to part with values for 
no value, or the production or sale of any commo- 
dities that are not only useless to the consumer, 
but tend to his injury and to the general injury of 
the community ; it is self-evident that all such em- 
ployments are not of the true life, but of the false. 
Better that a millstone be hung about your neck 
and cast into the sea than engage in any of them. 



16 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

And then, secondly, there is a true and a false 
life ill the pursuit of legitimate occupations. We 
must do our work faithfully, efficiently, honestly. 

" Act well your part : there all honor lies," the 
poet says ; and there the profit lies, too, I will add. 
When I was a blacksmith I took a great deal of 
pride in having it said that my work was better 
done than that of my competitors. And so, I may 
be permitted to say, all along through life, I have 
tried to do faithfully and well whatever I have un- 
dertaken. If I have succeeded in this, my life work 
has been true and not false, in this one respect, 
whether otherwise successful or not ; other people 
are the better for their dealings with me, and I 
know I am the better for my efforts to excel. 

Young men and boys are too apt to be heedless 
of these principles. They do not seem to know 
that honesty is the best policy in the relations of 
life, or else they do not know that it is dishonest 
to be unfaithful in whatever service they are en- 
gaged. 

I see apprentices and other young men employed 
by others for hire. Too often it is the case that 
their ambition is to be as unprofitable as possible 
to their employers without losing place. A young 
man who starts out on that principle will always 
be a fraud and must necessarily stay at the bottom 
—a failure. 

But take a boy of tho other make-up ; one who 
starts out with the ambition to excel in whatever 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN WORK. IT 

he undertakes, be it ever so humble or ever so 
cheap, he cannot be kept down ; that kind of peo- 
ple are too scarce in the world, and they are wanted. 
The world will find them out, sooner or later, and 
promote them, just as surely as it finds out the 
other sort and leaves them where they are. Or at 
the very least : all promotions and all real successes 
are of this class. In the one case the life is true ; 
in the other false. All through life I have seen 
and watched these two phases of life in work, and 
always seen the fruits of each to be as above stated. 
Young reader, the lesson to be drawn from all 
this is that if you would be anybody, or attain to 
any success in life, you must train yourself to act 
well your part in whatever your work is. Make 
yourself so necessary to your employer that he 
cannot afford to dispense with you, and you will 
be sure to be the gainer by it in the long run ; but 
if you start out critical and crotchety — doing as 
little as possible — working for your wages merely, 
without an eye to your employer's interest, he will 
very soon find it out and will be on the lookout for 
a better man. Business laws are inexorable. A 
man who hires labor of any kind must have honest 
work for honest pay. If he has not the brains and 
the energy to get this he must sooner or later go 
under and be succeeded by one who has. And 
this is the reason why shiftless workmen cannot 
succeed. Sooner or later every man is sure to find 
his proper level. It is an economic as well as a 
2 



18 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

moral law that you must not cheat your employer. 
Honesty is always the best policy ; and every young 
man may as well start out with the conviction that 
this is the rule that God has fixed over him, and 
it is as irrevocable as is the law of gravitation. 

Of course I am not to be understood that shift- 
less, lazy, time-serving, unprofitable men cannot 
find anything to do as hirelings ; there is generally 
something for everybody — good, bad, and indiffer- 
ent — to do. But what I do say is this : that class 
of men are always at a disadvantage. They must 
always work at the lowest wages. They are always 
under suspicion. In times of depression they are 
the first to be out of work. And in general they 
never amount to anything but "hewers of wood 
and drawers of water." And on the whole they 
cheat themselves the worst, and only amount to 
miserable failures. This is all there is of it. 



III. 

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN BUSINESS. 

The same rules as to the false and the true life 
apply to business that apply to work, as I tried to 
illustrate them in my last number. 

As the laws of nature cannot be ignored without 
incurring their penalties, so the laws of morals are 
inexorable. To say nothing of Divine retributive 
justice, or the Word of God, there is an economic 
penalty to the violation of these laws that we can- 
not escape. 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN BUSINESS. 19 

A miller cannot afford to take too much toll ; 
he is sure to be found out sometime, and lose more 
in custom than he makes by the stealings. A mer- 
chant cannot afford to misrepresent his goods or 
to cheat his customers in any way ; in the long run 
it will injure his trade more than the amount of 
wrongful gains, and that diverted trade will gravi- 
tate to the honest dealer. 

I once knew a sprightly young man in this county, 
a very competent business man, employed at a good 
salary in an important business establishment, en- 
tirely faithful and satisfactory in his work, and in a 
fair way to succeed to the position of his aged 
principal. He proved dishonest in money transac- 
tions, lost his place and died a miserable inebriate. 
Pure selfishness should have kept him honest. He 
could not afford to steal. The righteous law of 
economic retribution extinguished him as it is 
pretty sure to all such fools, sooner or later. 

I knew a young man of fine business attainments 
— educated to business by his friends, and pro- 
moted from point to point, until he had attained to 
a position of great responsibility, honor and emolu- 
ment. He could not afford to steal, but he did, 
and he is an outcast from all respectable associa- 
tions, and degraded from all respectable business, 
Tweed's millions of stealings turned out to be un- 
profitable as a business venture ; and his confreres 
have all turned out in like manner. 

The city of Scranton had been afflicted with a 



20 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

political leader who plundered her treasury at will, 
and for years he had been supposed to be invinci- 
ble. One day I saw him start for the State Prison. 
His confederates came to their grief before him. 
And so all the big and little bank thieves and de- 
faulters are coming to justice as we may see in the 
papers every daj^. 

These few instances are only samples of what 
I have seen and treasured up in my memory all 
my life. In all the multifarious transactions 
between man and man, my testimony and my 
admonition are that dishonesty in any of its 
phases never pays. True, I have seen it prosper 
for a season — sometimes for a pretty long season, 
seemingly — but I have seen many notable cases 
where the penalty came at last with severity. Some- 
how it is so fixed in economic law, as well as in the 
moral law, that " honesty is always the best policy," 
and it is not worth while for any man, young or 
old, to try to get around that law. The smaller 
cheats and frauds do not meet so conspicuous retri- 
bution ; but it is sure to come ; commensurate to 
the offenses ; for " what a man soweth that shall he 
also reap." Nobody knows how many business 
bankruptcies are caused by violations of this inex- 
orable law. 

I do not say that dishonest business men always 
fail in business, but I do say that where one of that 
class keeps above board through life, his success is 
attained in spite of the incumbrance of his dishon- 



THE FALSE AND THE TRUE — IN BUSINESS. 21 

est practices. Without them his success would 
have been vastly greater. I think the uniform tes- 
timony of all intelligent and impartial observers of 
business and business men is that all highly suc- 
cessful business men have been scrupulously hon- 
est in their business. 

In view of all this, my young friends, and in 
view of the uniform denunciations of Holy Writ 
upon all forms and all degrees of rapacity and 
wrong, I do not see how such a thing as even temp- 
tation to wrong in business can ever get a lodg- 
ment in your minds, if you will only take a thought 
on the subject. All species of wrong being inimi- 
cal to your interest, your comfort and your eter- 
nal well-being, you never can entertain a thought of 
any such thing if you will study out the subject for 
yourselves, and look about you and observe the prac- 
tical proofs of these theories. When we once come 
to understand that wrong to others is sure to re- 
coil, and the severest of the injury will be upon 
ourselves, it is impossible to entertain the idea of 
any dishonesty in business. 

There is one other principle of business ethics 
that is, perhaps, worthy of consideration in this 
connection. When a young man starts out in busi- 
ness he never should undertake to build himself 
up by unwarrantably pulling others down. To 
build up your own business by your own real merit 
—by the excellence of your wares or of your work, 
whatever it may be, by their reasonable price, by 



22 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

your fair dealing and promptness in execution ; in 
short by your general skill, facilities, and faithful- 
ness to your customers, is all legitimate, and any 
competitors who cannot survive such competition 
must and should retire from the contest. But a 
direct onslaught upon the business of a competitor 
— by detraction, slander, inuendo, or any other di- 
rect interference, is in the highest degree repre- 
hensible, and in the long run never can be success- 
ful. It is sure to recoil sooner or later. 

There is room enough in the world for every- 
body. If two of a trade happen to get too close 
together, so that there is not room for both, the 
weaker must retire to some more suitable locality, 
and there is no occasion for them to quarrel, or to 
try to injure each other's business. And it has 
always been a puzzle to me why it is that two of a 
trade cannot agree. Reader, never engage in that 
kind of competition. You cannot afford it. 

I can illustrate this by an incident of my own 
life. I was once employed in an office, where a 
fellow clerk, somehow, imbibed the idea that I was 
in his way and he in my way. I had not thought 
of such a thing, for I thought there was room 
enough for both of us. And while I was trying to 
get him promoted to the place he wanted, he was 
scheming to get me out of my place. The result 
was that I was considerably injured for the time, 
but I came out all right finally; and in schemes to 
supplant his principal, the individual in question 



ACCUMULATION — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 23 

lost his own place, irrevocably, to his great damage 
for the rest of his life. And this is no uncommon 
case. Any elderly man who has gone through the 
world with his eyes open can recall numerous in- 
stances of attempted overreaching, in various 
phases, of larger or smaller proportions, with sim- 
ilar ending. 

Never think of pulling somebody down for the 
purpose of building yourselves up, my friends. 
Success never comes of that sort of effort. Build 
up yourselves by your own brains, industry, push 
and honesty, and let other people alone to do the 
same if they will. If you have no merit of your 
own, the demerits of others, whatever they may 
be, cannot make you a success. 



IV. 

ACCUMULATION — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

There are but very few men who have the pecu- 
liar ability to amass large wealth, whatever their 
opportunities may be. Large pecuniary success 
requires extraordinary talent in that particular 
direction, as well as the industry and economy to 
utilize them* But for the reasonable and sufficient 
accumulation of property, it is not the best brains 
that are the most successful. It does not require 
much talent to do that. I have noticed all along 
through life that very frequently mediocre and illit- 
erate men are more successful in money matters 



24 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

than others with brilliant talents and high educa- 
tion. Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, with all 
their powers for earning money, would have died 
entirely poor but for the large donations made 
them by political friends. And I have seen men, 
unable to read or write, and scarcely able to count 
their own money, and with brains not much more 
than sufficient to shovel dirt, accumulate respectable 
properties. We say of such men, usually, that 
they know just enough to make money; but the 
fact is that they know a good deal more than that 
— they know enough to save some of it ; and any 
body with better brains can learn that if they will. 
I am not sure that excessive accumulations are 
desirable. No man has need of as much as a hun- 
dred thousand dollars. And I am sure that it is 
not well for young people to have very rich fathers. 
Now and then we hear of a rich man's son who is 
good for something, but in a general way, to bring 
up a boy to understand that he is to be rich when 
his father dies, is to spoil him. Notoriously, rich 
men's sons are usually good for nothing. They go 
to ruin themselves, and waste their patrimony very 
briskly when they get control of it. And all this 
is easily accounted for on common principles of 
human nature. Work of any kind is not attractive. 
People do not take to it from choice. And 
so when a young man is trained to think that he 
is to have money enough to carry him through, 
it is contrary to nature for him to put forth much 



ACCUMULATION — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 25 

exertion of any kind. In his educational course 
he will depend on his money and his social stand- 
ing chiefly, and do as little work as possible ; and 
in anything that he undertakes he is pretty sure to, 
amount to nothing. On the other hand, luxury, 
dissipation and licentiousness are naturally attrac 
tive to the young ; and so it is nothing more than- 
human nature that rich young men go to ruin. 

But take a boy unencumbered by wealth — know- 
ing that he must make his own way in the world — 
must do something ; if he has the elements of man- 
hood in him, it is only human nature that he should 
put forth all there is in him to make his mark and 
be somebody. A parent can safely aid such a boy 
to a reasonable extent, in the way of education, or 
otherwise. 

On the whole, therefore, the very worst thing 
that a man can do for his children, is to make them 
rich with money in their young days, or to make 
them think that they are to be rich. 

And here, I may as well say, once for all, that 
whatever I shall say, in these papers, about econo- 
my and accumulation, I do not object to the use of 
the luxuries, the elegancies, or even the baubles of 
life, by those who can afford them. To cultivate 
the beautiful and the refined is only to copy after 
the work of God in nature. The landscape of 
green and fruitful fields, the grandeur of the forest, 
the rolling rivers, the gigantic waterfalls, the starry 
heavens, the magnificent sunset, the gorgeous rain- 



26 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

bow, the golden corn, the blade of grass, the flow- 
ers of the field, all, all invite the development of 
whatever there is of beauty in the capacities of man. 

But what I do insist upon is this : the necessa- 
ries of life are first ; and every man's duty, and his 
real comfort and peace of mind require that he 
shall make adequate provision for these, not only 
for the time being, but for all contingencies through 
life, before dissipating his earnings upon mere lux- 
uries. We see men sixty, seventy, eighty years 
old, working for wages for their daily bread, and go 
to the poor house when no longer able to earn a 
miserable pittance by the torturing physical exer- 
tion of bone and muscle, becoming paralyzed by 
age and needing leisure and repose. It is pitiable. 
Young man, you cannot afford to come to that. 

But I see young men in unknown numbers travel- 
ing in that road as fast as the wheels of time can 
carry them. We have had great railroad and other 
labor strikes ; and in looking over the accounts of 
them, there is one point that everywhere stands 
out in bold relief, that is mournfully, not to say 
fearfully, apropos to this phase of my subject. 
It is that the masses of laboring people are desti- 
tute of the common necessaries of life, whenever 
their work is suspended; and there is a general 
. clamor for public provision of food for the people 
out of work. No matter that they have been re- 
ceiving extravagant, unprecedented wages, the mo- 
ment that they are out of work, either by their 



ACCUMULATION — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 2T 

own act or otherwise, we begin to hear the cry of 
starvation. And it is not a false alarm. I have no 
idea that one-fourth of all the men who are in the 
service of others for hire, in all vocations — rail- 
roads, manufactories, shops, stores, offices and 
everything else — in a suspension of work, could 
pay their necessary expenses for ninety days with- 
out running in debt. And by running in debt I 
mean that they are not worth enough to buy food 
and raiment for ninety days. Look around among 
your acquaintances and see whether this is so. The 
stereotyped excuse is that wages are too low, and 
the appeal is to the public to provide for the bread- 
less in times of depression — provide for able-bodied 
paupers caused by a brief suspension of emplojr- 
ment, when every man, in flush times, spends 
enough money for cigars, beer, and other needless 
extravagance to make him comfortably rich at sixty, 
if saved. It is an outrage upon civilization. 

But what of the other side ? For that state of 
things is not universal. There is another way— 
a better road to travel. Here and there may be 
seen a young man who is not spending all his earn- 
ings, but economizes and accumulates, so that he is 
always in easy circumstances and "above board." 
These may be found in all the trades and occupa- 
tions of the world of production. And they are 
not always the highest priced men. I have often 
seen men working for the lowest wages, commenc- 
ing in their young days to save up, little by little, 



28 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

putting those savings to good use to help to earn 
something more, and so going on, in ease and inde- 
pendence through life, and finding themselves com- 
fortably rich in old age. These are not the men 
that are always grumbling at low wages, and hard 
times, and organize strikes and mobs. And I see 
men side by side with these, receiving twice, three, 
four times the wages of the former, and never quite 
up even ; always on a strain ; their wages never 
high enough to support them ; times are always 
hard ; and they are always looking for something 
to turn up to help them out. 

Such, in a general way, are the two ways for peo- 
ple to go through life. And as a man starts in his 
young days, so he will usually go through to the end. 



V. 

ACCUMULATION — SPECIFIC. 

A large majority of young men, earning wages 
all the way from a dollar a day to a hundred dol- 
lars a month, do not save anything. They think 
they cannot. Approach one of this class on the 
subject — say a $*T5 a month man — and he will 
say : " It is impossible for me to save anything 
out of my little salary ; it is too small; I have 
tried and it is out of the question ; I am not very 
extravagant, and it will no more than pay my nec- 
essary expenses." 

Then, my young friend, you never can save any- 
thing out of any other sum. No difference what 



ACCUMULATION — SPECIFIC. 29 

position you ever attain to, or what amount of 
money you earn, your expenses will always be up 
to your income, unless you can learn to lay up 
something out of $75 a month or a good deal less. 
Then you are to be a poverty stricken subject of 
want and distress through life ; for I have always 
noticed that your class of people — those who spend 
all they earn — never earn quite enough to meet 
their wants. No matter how much their income 
is, and how high their style of living is, they are 
always on a strain for something higher. Some- 
body is a little ahead of them, and are they not 
just as good as that somebody? And their 
distress for the want of that higher notch is as 
poignant as is that of those who have only pota- 
toes to eat and are looking for something else. 
And they are apt to get in the habit of running in 
debt — spending their money before it is earned — 
with all the harassing and embarrassments that 
that implies, and not infrequently are led into 
crooked ways and crime to keep up their supplies; 
examples of which we may read of nearly every 
day in the papers. Such are the treasures that you 
are laying up for yourselves, my young friends, 
for your comfort through life. 

It is a great mistake. You can save something. 
It is a notorious fact that a large majority of the 
large and small fortunes that are originally accu- 
mulated in this country have originated from the 
small savings from small incomes of their owners 



30 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

in early life. Specifically: I can point you to 
numerous men of my acquaintance, and of about 
my age, who started out upon hard work upon less 
than one-third of $T5 a month ; and from the sav- 
ings of such meagre wages, as the foundation, they 
are now comfortably rich. And I can also point 
you to others who commenced life with much bet- 
ter prospects, larger incomes, who, like you, thought 
they could not save anything, and have punished 
along through life in poverty, genteel poverty, 
some of them, but none the less distressing to 
them, for never quite genteel enough for their 
cravings — and now in old age helpless, only as 
" hewers of wood and drawers of water." 

When John Magee, the millionaire, was doing 
farm labor in this town at eight dollars a month, 
and saved his money and put it to profitable use — 
never indulging in any avoidable expense — he 
planted the seeds of capital, and established the 
habits of economy and thrift that made him what 
he was in after life. And John Magee was a man 
that all young men can well afford to pattern after 
in all the relations of life. 

I might write down the name of a Corning man 
who commenced life by blacking boots and selling 
papers, saving his money instead of wasting it for 
pleasant indulgences that he could do without, and 
going on, step by step, into business larger and 
still larger, not indulging in any needless expense 
until his accumulations were such that he could 



ACCUMULATION — SPECIFIC. 31 

really afford it ; and to-day he is one of the rich 
business men of Corning, and the same plain unos- 
tentatious, sensible man that he was thirty-five 
years ago when he was poor. 

And I know another Corning man who com- 
menced here in Coming's early days. He earned 
high wages for the times ; but he was a " clever 
fellow," as the saying is ; he thought he must 
maintain a position up high in young people's 
fashionable society, indulging in all the costly 
frivolities of the times. Ostentation, glitter and 
spread were with him the chief end of man. And 
he could not save anything. Of course not. On 
that theory of life, expenses can only be limited 
by ability to pay. Saving is out of the question. 
Those habits became chronic, as they, usually do 
by a few years of their indulgence. They have 
not been cured ; he is now an old man — a subject 
of servitude for the rest of his life. And this is 
what you are sure to come to, young men of to-day, 
if you persevere in your unthrifty habits, unless 
you have the luck to die before you come to it. 

I know a man who came to Corning twelve years 
ago, with a good-sized family on his hands. His 
wages have not averaged more than $1.50 per day. 
With that small income in ten years he had a home 
of his own, worth $1,000 — free and clear. 

A young business man of Corning, that I know, 
left his father's house at fourteen years of age ; 
worked for merchants for a series of years, at such 



32 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

wages as boys were able to get — always low — at 
the last only $18 a month and board ; but he always 
saved something from his wages. And when he 
had arrived at a suitable age, his habits of industry, 
economy and integrity had won for him a name 
that enabled him to start out in business on his 
own account. Then, while paying up the debt for 
his original stock of goods, his personal expenses 
were $300 a year only. He has been in business 
ten years, and has accumulated a capital that, with 
a continuance of reasonable prudence, assures him 
sufficient wealth. What is noteworthy in this case 
is : It happens to be known to a certainty that but 
for that young man's habits of economy, and his 
tried integrity during his apprenticeship, he could 
not have started in that business at all, which is 
now making him independent. He was watched 
when he knew not of it, and found not wanting. 
He had the groundwork of honest manhood in him, 
and it mattered not to him who was on his track, 
or when, or where. And this is another proof of 
what I tried to inculcate in a former paper, that 
aside from any higher motive, honesty always pays. 
And I know another case of a youngerly suc- 
cessful Corning business man, who started when a 
boy, with the capital of honesty, industry, fidelity 
to his employer, and rigid economy. He adopted 
the policy of doing all he could for his employer, 
instead of as little as he could, as is the case with 
too many boys and young men. He was always on 



ACCUMUL ATIO N — SPEC1 FIC. 33 

hand and always reliable, never exhausted by any 
sort of licentiousness or dissipation, and as a mat- 
ter of course he soon became so necessary to his 
employer as to command the highest wages that 
the service would admit of. He began at $6 a 
month and board, and at the end of six years he 
was getting $500 a year and board, and had saved 
a thousand dollars. It is simply a natural result 
that he is now a prosperous and reasonably wealthy 
merchant. 

What has been done can be done ; and from all 
these examples it is clear enough that almost any 
3 r oung man can save something of his earnings if 
he will. And it may be taken for granted that 
pecuniary success is well nigh impossible, in any 
business, with those who have not learned to save 
something in early life. 

But the answer to all this is : " Well, all this 
may b3 true, but I cannot cut down my expenses 
so as to save anything, without giving up what I 
consider really necessary to maintain my standing 
with my associates." I was told the other day, by 
a man of about my age, as the result of his life's 
experience, that from the wages of labor — high 
wages even — a man cannot live respectably and 
save enough in his life time of vigor to support 
him in his old age. 

Now, it is clear enough that both of these propo- 
sitions are true. The young man admits that he 
must spend all his earnings ; the old man admits 
3 



34 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

ttiat he has spent all his. I am not assuming to 
make a law by which people may get rich, but only 
expounding the laws in this respect that all must 
be governed by. And it is so fixed, somehow, 
that wealth is not produced by indulgence. You 
cannot eat your cake, and keep it. You cannot 
spend your money, and save it. You cannot use 
up all your income, and grow rich. You must 
save something, or not have anything. You must 
forego some indulgences that may be deemed neces- 
sary to a respectable standing in your set, while 
young, or suffer the penalties of violated economic 
law all through life, with multiplying intensity, as 
old age creeps on. This is just the way it is, and 
you or I cannot help it. The choice is for you to 
make, and at sixty-five or seventy years of age you 
will have no right to quarrel with the social fab- 
ric, or the laws of the land, or the fortunes of pro- 
vident people, who are now laying the foundations 
for future opulence, while you waste your oppor- 
tunity — as we often hear old people quarrel — if 
you prefer present indulgence to future fortune. 

Our real wants are very few and quite easily 
supplied. And it is a great mistake to suppose 
that there is any pressure, worthy of note, upon 
any young man for spending all his income. You do 
not need any diamond pins, or other jewelry, or 
gold watches, or kid gloves, or pretty canes, or ten 
dollar shoes, or high priced suits, or any of the 
expensive frivolities that come along, or cigars, or 



DO SOMETHING. 35 

beer, or any other poisons. You do not need any 
of these for a respectable appearance in your busi- 
ness, whatever it may be. You do not need them 
to secure the respect of the really high-toned and 
substantial people of your acquaintance. Without 
the baubles and the glitter, and with an accumulat- 
ing bank account, you will be esteemed the more 
highly by all whose good opinion is worth any- 
thing. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is that there 
are two roads open to the free choice of all young 
men — one leading to competence, and the other 
through all the distress of continual poverty, and 
to the poor house at last. 



VI. 

DO SOMETHING. 

There is a class of young men who have qualified 
themselves — or they think they have — for work 
that they think more genteel and respectable than 
farm or mechanic work. They have been educated, 
or have educated themselves, it may be, in the kid 
glove way of life, and they think themselves too 
good to endure the vulgar sunshine without an 
umbrella, or to do anything to harden up their 
delicate muscles, to disfigure their pretty hands, or 
mar their elegant rings. And as with the miners, 
w T ho think they cannot do any thing else but delve 
in the mines, and the mechanics who think they 
cannot do any thing outside of a shop, they think 



36 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

they cannot do anything that is not genteel. The 
market is always overstocked with that kind of 
workers, so that many of them are out of employ- 
ment. They are mistaken. There is nothing about 
them to disable them from doing any useful labor. 
They only lack the will and the practice. There 
is no such thing in physical nature as gentility. If 
humanity were not all fit for hard work, some of it 
would not have the same organization, or the same 
physical needs. " In the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread," means that the physical wants of 
the race shall be produced by physical labor ; and 
all ordinary developed manhood — womanhood too 
— is adapted to that labor. 

When a thrifty farmer's or mechanic's boy im- 
bibes an ambition to do something other than what 
his father has made his money at, that ambition 
may be very well, and when his father strains a 
point to educate him for that something else, the 
education is surely very well, for it will qualify him 
for a better farmer or mechanic in case he does not 
succeed in the other thing. But when duly quali^ 
fied for that higher calling, as he thinks it is, and 
W T hen, wherever he goes for a situation, he finds a 
dozen applications for every vacant place that oc- 
curs, he should remember that his education has 
not necessarily unfitted him for the work that he 
has been trained to, or any other that he can get to 
do, and also that his life mission is to do something, 
and not to be wasting his time in an unavailing 



DO SOMETHING. 3t 

hunt for something that he thinks genteel and 
agreeable. And so of all the hordes of idle young 
men, who throng all the towns and cities vainly 
looking for certain classes of employment, I say 
retire from such unequal contest ; start out : go 
somewhere and do something. There is something 
for you to do somewhere ; go and find it. If you 
are not too good to do the work that you are look- 
ing for and cannot get, jon are not too good to do 
the next best thing that you can get. There is no 
honest work that is not really respectable. Most 
of the wealthy men of this country commenced life 
upon work that you are in the habit of thinking 
too low for you to begin on. I could mention a 
prominent and able Corning lawyer who Com- 
menced life by chopping cord wood. Another who 
commenced by teaching district schools when he 
could get them, and at other times by common car- 
penter work, and painting, and whatever he could 
get to do. It is quite likely that these men are the 
better lawyers for their rough beginning. I think 
it is generally the case that those who are too good 
to do the work that comes along, and seems to be 
necessary for them to do, are never good for much 
of anything. 

The inexorable law is, young man, that if you 
would succeed in life you must utilize your time 
by always doing something, and never feel above 
that which comes along for you to do. 

And after all there is not so much difference in 



38 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

the hardship of employments, if a man's heart is 
in his work. Every trade has its pleasures and its 
pains ; and on the whole I think, the enjoyment of 
the life-work depends more upon the man than 
upon the vocation. While what we call hard work, 
per se, is not agreeable, its results may make it 
very comfortable and easy. I know how this is by 
experience. Not many years ago, when I com- 
menced to build up a new manufacturing industry 
here in Corning, with my own hands digging 
foundations, laying stone walls, putting up machin- 
ery and then running it, month after month la- 
boring so severely that it was all I could do to 
climb the hill to my house at night, I can truly 
say that I never enjoyed myself better in any other 
occupation. I enjoyed it, because I thought I was 
planting the seeds of a business that in other hands 
might grow into importance. Again : to go back 
to my young days, when I was improving a little 
farm, making acre by acre a continuous source of 
income, with my own hands building a habitation 
and a home, in winter time hammering in a black- 
smith shop, altogether going to make a homestead 
and a living for the future ; that kind of work is 
what we call hard, but I enjoyed it in view of the 
fruits that were coming all along, and that were in 
future prospect. It was really easier than my later, 
and so-called more genteel work — of the brains, 
with its responsibilities, its anxious days and sleep- 
less nights, and its premature gray hairs. 



DO SOMETHING. 39 

No, my friends, the difference is not so much in 
the work as in the spirit with which you go into it. 
Anything will be irksome and hard that you ac- 
cept as a mere necessity and a task. But with 
your heart in your work, whatever it is, determin- 
ed to act well 3'our part, with an ambition to suc- 
ceed in life and be of some service in the world, so 
that somebody will be the better for your having 
lived in it, you will extract from your vocation as 
much comfort as there is for any of us in this im- 
perfect state of existence. 

Another class of 3 r oung men ma3~, if they will, 
profit by a word of caution. It is so arranged in 
nature that eA r er3 r bod3 r is the better for doing some- 
thing in the v?ay of work. God has not provided 
any place for idlers. It is a mistake to suppose 
that it is necessary for a part of the population to 
be idle to make emplo3 T ment for another part. 
There is room enough and work enough for all. 
Some* parents are so imprudent as to make their 
children rich without any effort on their part. And 
a great lnai"^ 3'oung men somehow imbibe the idea 
that they are to be rich when their fathers die, 
without any veiy good grounds for such an expect- 
anc3 r . Many a man has the reputation of being 
wealthy when not worth a dollar, and riches have 
a habit of taking to themselves wings and flying 
awa3 r ; so that an3 r 3 r oung man who relies on his 
father's mone3' to cany him through, is quite as 
likety to be disappointed as otherwise. In a former 



40 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

paper (IV.) I have explained how it is that rich 
young men are usually good for nothing, and go to 
ruin. The only salvation for them is to commence 
in early life to train themselves to some useful 
vocation in the battle of life. Anticipated riches, 
or riches in hand even, should not debar them from 
this. A young man is not necessarily ruined by 
riches, or by hopes of them. There is a way of 
escape. Wm. H. Vanderbilt followed in the foot- 
steps of his father in the way of work, and he is 
a success. I know a young man in the city of 
Scranton, an only child of a reputed rich father — 
petted and indulged, and left to himself to lead a 
life of idleness and dissipation if he would. By 
his own ambition and energy he pushed himself 
into a learned profession ; so that when his father's 
riches went down to zero, he was well qualified by 
habits and acquirements to enter upon his life-work 
with all the elements of success. Occasional ex- 
amples of this kind are to be met with, but Jl may 
always be noticed that rich men's sons who do not 
go to ruin are those who engage in some kind of 
work. 

So, young man, if you are rich, your case is not 
hopeless. Your wealth is not really a disability 
after all. You can be somebody if you will adopt 
some useful work and do it. Then, if your riches 
fail you, you will be prepared to face the calamity 
with equanimity ; if not, I can assure you, from the 
experience of a busy life, that to a well-disposed 



EDUCATION. 41 

ambitious man, the most satisfactory life is to 
always be doing something useful. 



VII. 

EDUCATION. 

The subject of education is, of course, an im- 
portant factor in the make-up of young men for 
their life-work. I think the bearing of what is 
called education is a good deal misapprehended in 
this behalf. I have frequently observed, however, 
that persons of deficient school education are apt 
to depreciate the value of any higher attainments 
in that respect than they themselves possess. Ami 
this may be what's the matter with me in my esti- 
mate of the real value of school education and its 
province in the labor of life. 

Nevertheless I will venture to say that from my 
observation through life I think the power of mere 
school education as an element of success in life is 
often greatly overrated ; and when this is the case 
the education itself may be positively injurious. 
When I hear a parent say : " I will send my boy to 
school — to college — I will give him an education, 
and if everything else fails him that cannot be 
taken away, that will carry him through ; his edu- 
cation will always afford him a support;" when I 
hear that kind of philosophy, I think that man is 
mistaken. School education cannot do any such 
thing. I have seen young men come out of college 
with parchment all right — certifying to abundant 



42 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

proficiency in all that colleges pretend to do for a 
man, and so ignorant of the practical affairs of life 
as to be about as helpless and inefficient as a baby. 
When I was a young man I met a man of about 
my age just out of college. He boasted a famil- 
iarity with seven or eight languages ; and I don't 
know how many other accomplishments. I thought 
he was a wonderful man. Horseback riding was 
quite common, and he did not know which end fore- 
most to put a saddle on a horse. All his other 
practical knowledge was ditto. I never heard of 
his amounting to anything. 

I have often met with monomaniacs on the sub- 
ject of college education — men and women run 
wild with the notion that what they call education 
is about all that the}^ will ever need in this world. 
They want an education ; they are determined to 
have an education. Education, education, is the 
continual burden of their song, but with no definite 
idea of what it is for ; as if education were the 
the chief end of man. They are mistaken. They 
greatly overrate the value of school education, and 
mistake its office. And when it is taken as an end, 
instead of a means; when it is substituted for the 
real knowledge of the practical affairs of life, it is 
a positive damage. 

After having written the foregoing, I met with the 
following complaint from the New York Tribune 

The following inquiry comes to us from a city 
clergyman : 



EDUCATION. 43 

f< To the Editor — Sir : — How can our young men 
find employment ? This city and other cities are full, 
and I know not what to advise our young men to do 
to make their living. Particularly am I interested in 
a young man who has been to college, is willing to take 
hold of any kind of work, and is withal of fine per- 
sonal appearance, and yet can find no employment 
which will give him his bread. If lie wants to emi- 
grate to the West or South, I would gladly pay his ex- 
penses and give him an outfit. I venture to ask you 
for light on a matter beset, as far as I know, with some 
difficulty. I am, sir, respectfully," R. 

Colleges do not pretend to teach a man how to 
earn his living ; but a large proportion of college 
students go to school without any definite idea of- 
what for, only under the popular idea before alluded 
to, that somehow their education is to carry them 
through ; and after they graduate they find, as in 
the case of the Tribune man, that their education 
is not available as a bread-producing power. Hav- 
ing all along cultivated the idea that their educa- 
tion must support them, they cannot think of going 
down, as they call it, to any ordinary work — vul- 
gar work that uneducated men are capable of doing. 
Oh, no. Their education would be wasted. That 
is not what they went to college for. And the 
market for that kind of genteel work being alwa} r s 
overstocked, the college education is a positive 
damage to this class of young men. A four-years 
apprenticeship in a blacksmith shop, or on a farm, 
or any other trade that would not cultivate this 
aversion to what is called hard work, would be of 
much more value to them. 

Well, what then? Is college education alto- 



44 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

gether useless ? Not at all. It does not disqualify 
a man for the active duties of life. It does not 
necessarily exalt him above his own plane, so as 
to spoil him. If a young man goes to college with 
so much of education on the brain as to depend on 
the college, in some mysterious way, to turn him 
out a giant, fit to battle successfully in the brisk 
competitions for the big prizes of life, it is not the 
fault of his alma mater that he flattens out in a 
reasonable time. If rich men's brainless sons, with 
their college parchments in their pockets fall be- 
hind poor men's uneducated boys in the race of 
life, that is not the fault of the colleges. I have 
known a Corning boy w T ho went from the carpen- 
ter's bench to college, graduated and came home 
with all the usual accomplishments of college grad- 
uates, but w^ith the same old spirit of doing some- 
thing — anything that is necessary for him to do ; 
he is not spoiled. He did not go to college with 
the expectation that the college would make him, 
but only that what he could acquire there would 
help him to make himself. And there are many 
such. 

No. I would not detract an iota from the im- 
portance of collegiate education ; but I would put 
it upon its proper footing. I would not ask of it 
more than it pretends to do. While it does not 
directly fit a man for the battles of life, while it 
does not make brains, or work any miracles upon 
the habits of its subjects, while it does not make 



EDUCATION. 45 

fortunes or business for them, and does not do 
any other miraculous things, it is of great value to 
any energetic, industrious, go-ahead young man 
who is determined to push things and be some- 
body. No matter what occupation he may find 
it necessary to go down to after he graduates. It 
will make him the better farmer, or mechanic, 
or professional man. The discipline, the actual 
knowledge, and the intercourse with high-toned 
men, that a college course confers, can hardly ever 
be wasted on such a man. 

So, young man, if you are of that kind of make- 
up, and if you have a hankering for a college edu-< 
cation, go ; go if you can, and you can without an 
if, whether you have a father to pay your way or 
not. In an Eastern college there are always not 
less than twenty men in every class who work their 
own way through in one way and another. But 
they are not the dolts and the laggards. They are 
men of push who will amount to something any 
how, and of the class that college education is 
good for. Of course they are not the men who 
cannot save anything out of six hundred to a 
thousand dollars a year at home. They do not 
smoke cigars, or drink any intoxicating leverages, 
or pay ten cents for every frivolous indulgence 
that they meet with. Their educational work is 
primary with them, and they leave it with class- 
mates with more money and less brains to spread 
themselves as thinly as they please. 



46 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

And then, in this matter of education, I think 
there is a good deal of misapprehension m respect 
to what are called " self-made men ;" as if a man 
ever amounts to anything without making himself 
what he is ; as if there is some other way to success 
than by his own indefatigable industry ; as if money 
can make a man. The boy who goes to college to 
get an education without making it for himself will 
never get it. The college cannot make it for him — 
his money cannot. There is no royal road to knowl- 
edge. He that expects his school, or his teacher, 
or his money to make him, will surely not be a 
self-made man, but he will not be a man at all. He 
will always be a failure. If, by hook or crook, he 
smuggles himself through, so as to get the name 
of a college graduate, so much the worse for him, 
for, when he comes into the actual competitions of 
life, his dependence upon his shams will only make 
his failure the more disastrous. No, nry friends, it 
will not do. Honest work, with the natural powers 
that God has made for you, is the only way to real 
manhood. And yet it is convenient and proper for 
a young man to have a reasonable amount of money 
furnished him to pay his college expenses. Those 
who have not that must work the harder or longer 
than they of equal powers who have. For a father 
who can afford it, this is the best investment he 
can make for the right kind of a boy. 

Then, again, as I have already said : the power 
of education is too commonly overrated ; as if it 



EDUCATION. 47 

were a substantive thing that will produce some- 
thing for a man, or do something for him of its own 
inherent power, without an effort on his part ; 
whereas at the most it is only a slight auxiliary to 
his own powers to aid him to work out his own 
destiny. Too much is expected of it. Even the 
superficial college graduate, who went in with the 
idea that the college was to make him, comes out 
with the idea that his sheep-skin certificate is to 
carry him through, while his self-sufficiency and 
gasconade are about all that there is of him. Out- 
siders are apt to expect too much. Somehow they 
get an idea that there is some mysterious power in 
a college to work over any ordinary boy and make 
a prodigy of him in four or five }^ears, so that he 
shall know everything, and be able to accomplish 
wonderful things in any literary way. He is ex- 
pected to astonish all ordinary mortals with his 
profundity, and to always be ready to deal out the 
highest grade of literary wisdom on demand : 
whereas the really successful college graduate, he 
who has gained all there is in a college course, and 
knows what there is of it, always appreciates more 
the paucity of his own knowledge than the amount 
of it ; having learned all along, more and more, as 
he has advanced in his studies, the littleness of his 
own knowledge in comparison with what is beyond. 
Taking Iris acquirements at their value only, he is 
prepared to make the most of them, by utilizing 
them as an aid in his life-work. 



48 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

After all, a collegiate education is not indispen- 
sable to success, even in professional life ; or rather, 
perhaps I should say that a college is not indispen- 
sable for the essentials of college education. We 
cannot know how much better Patrick Henry or 
Henry Clay would have been with college parch- 
ments, but we do know that they were sufficiently 
successful without them. And we see a good many 
men rise to eminence without them. But I think 
it is to be noted that all those successful men are 
those who get all the substantial of education 
somehow, outside of college walls. They might 
get them to better advantage, perhaps, at college, 
but any other way serves a very good purpose. My 
own limited common school education for instance, 
with the private study of the more common sciences, 
and a persistent and continuous general reading, 
has probably been as valuable to me as would have 
been a college course without the subsequent sys- 
tematic study. At any rate there is an available 
substitute for college, for any young man who 
thirsts for knowledge — in the books and the study, 
anywhere. If, as I have tried to show, a man must 
make himself; if the college cannot do it, it does 
not make so much difference where he does it, after 
all. Of course the facilities are better in a college, 
but the principal difference is that out of college 
the work is not so likely to be done. 

On the whole, therefore, we conclude that book 
learning is not the chief end of man ; that there is 



TO DRINK OR LET JT ALONE. 49 

no mysterious power in colleges to make men; 
that college education is an important element in a 
man's intellectual capital with which to enter into 
the sharp competition for the prizes of life ; and 
that no young man of brains, industry, and energy 
need despair of securing all the advantages of such 
education. 



VIII. 

TO DRINK OR LET IT ALONE. 

It is not necessary to spend any time to prove 
that intemperance is incompatible with success in 
life. The inevitable ruin of the inebriate, ever}^- 
where seen and understood, is conclusive. Young 
men do not start out in life with the purpose of 
being drunkards. They know that the drunkard's 
life cannot be a successful one. 

Not long ago I heard a sharp business man, a 
moderate drinker, and an able advocate of the 
liquor trade, say that about one out of fifteen can 
drink occasionally without being materially injured 
by it — that is, without becoming drunkards. My 
observation through life corroborates that opinion ; 
so that when a young man begins life by taking an 
occasional drink, he takes fourteen chances, to one, 
to be ruined by that habit, if he persists in it. 

Forty years ago the temperance question was 
agitated in my neighborhood. Young men said 
then, as young men say now, that they could 
drink or let it alone. They could. Some of them 



50 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

drank on. Some of us let it alone. Of those who 
drank I have seen a large proportion go down to 
drunkard's graves; others are living monuments 
of the folly of young men's not letting it alone 
when they can ; while of those who let it alone 
through life, I never have known one to be a 
drunkard. And I think not more than one in 
fifteen of those who continued to drink failed to be 
drunkards. 

So, young men of to-day, you say you can drink 
or let it alone. You can. And the very best 
thing you can do is to let it alone. I can assure 
you, from my life long experience and observation 
that 3^our only safety is to let it alone. If what 
you mean when you say that you can drink or let 
it alone, is that you can continue to drink indefi- 
nitely and retain this power to drink or let it alone, 
you are making a great, and probably fatal mistake. 
Oh, how many of those who started out in life with 
me, who said they could drink or let it alone, but 
did not choose to let it alone, how many of them I 
have seen pass along heedlessly, to the point where 
they could drink but could not let it alone. One 
case I will mention. Nearly forty years ago a man 
of about my own age was a fellow workman with 
me in a blacksmith shop. He imbibed the habit 
of going occasionally to the tavern near by and 
taking a drink. To my remonstrances he had the 
ready reply, "I can drink or let it alone," which 
was tiue then, but long years ago he resigned that 



TO DRINK OR LET IT ALONE. 51 

power, he has spent a fortune, and is now a bloated 
inebriate. And he is a prohibitionist. Yes, a 
drunkard and a prohibitionist. He is an earnest 
pleader with temperance men to vote the liquor 
shops away because he says he cannot refrain from 
drink when he comes in contact with it, but is al- 
ways anxious to reform. Ask this class of men — 
those who have gone through all the phases of the 
drink habit — how it is about drinking or letting it 
alone. They know all about it, not by hearsay, 
not by sight, not by any speculative philosophy, 
but by its bitterness ground into their very souls, 
by the slavery in which it holds them. Ask them 
whether to drink or let it alone while you can do 
either. Ask them if you can continue to drink 
with impunity. And if they tell you to drink, 
drink on. 

If my own personal experience in any phase of 
life is of any value to the young, it is especially so 
in this matter of temperance ; for I know that the 
temperance pledge has been of as much value to 
me as to any living man. Not that I was ever a 
drunkard, or even a moderate drinking man ; for I 
never was ; but by that pledge I have been saved 
from all that. All that I am or ever hope to be I 
owe, under God, to the temperance pledge, and I 
am not ashamed to say so. When about fifteen 
years of age I was so situated as to come in con- 
tact with a good deal of drinking and drunkenness ; 
so that I could not but observe much of their con- 



52 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

sequences. It was very disagreeable to me, and I 
then concluded firmly that I would never be a 
drunkard ; and secondly, that the only sure way to 
save myself from being a drunkard was to refrain 
from strong drink. Such was my pledge, and I 
have kept it substantially, from that day till now. 
And trom my experience and observation through 
life, in looking back over what I have passed 
through since then, reverting to the great numbers 
of stronger men of my acquaintance who have 
fallen because they did not take such a pledge, it is 
no humiliation for me to say that without that 
pledge in early life, I, too, would have gone down 
the drunkard's road. I have been probably, as 
firm in purpose, as stubborn and persevering as 
most of men, but not more so than was ex-Governor 
Yates, the great war Governor of Illinois, Senator 
Saulsbury, of Delaware, and hosts of other distin- 
guished and strong men of the nation, who have 
been ruined by drink ; and I say to you now, 
young men of to-day, that from fifty years' experi- 
ence and observation of this matter of temperance, 
could I go back to youth again, I would not even 
dare to trust myself to the habit of taking an oc- 
casional drink. That pledge, and that alone, under 
God, is all that I would dare rely onto go through 
all the risks and incitements to dissipation that I 
must come in contact with. It is the only possible 
thing that you, my young friends, can depend on 
to carry you safely through. 



TO DRINK OR LET IT ALONE. 53 

And for your encouragement I can assure you 
that abstinence is one of the easiest things to do : 
that is to say, for you who can drink or let it alone ; 
and it is to such that this discourse is chiefly di- 
rected. Not having acquired the appetite for drink 
so as to hanker for it, it is no self-denial to refrain, 
only so far as what is supposed to be the social de- 
mand upon you to indulge with your friends and 
companions who are in the habit. If there ever 
was any difficulty in this respect, I presume there 
was much more of it in my young days, when it 
was not held to be at all disreputable to drink, 
than now, when most of the better classes of peo- 
ple look upon the habit with horror. I heard a 
minister of the gospel say, in the pulpit, not long 
ago, that a boy takes his first drink with a trem- 
bling hand — his conscience smites him. Fifty 
years ago it was not so. Children were trained to 
drink, and there was no disgrace in moderate drink- 
ing, and very little in drunkenness. And yet I 
can say to you now, that I never have met with the 
slightest difficulty in carrying out my pledge. In 
all these years I do not remember any occasion, in 
any presence, where I have been subject to any in- 
sult, rebuff, or embarrassment because of declining 
to drink with friends. Somehow it has always 
seemed to me that the modest, unostentatious de- 
clination of the proffered glass has endowed the 
offerer with respect for my principles, and distrust 
of his own. 



54 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Thus far I have assumed that a time comes to 
men who indulge in drink when they cannot let it 
alone. This is not strictly true, but so nearly 
true that it is the only safe theory for a young man 
to act upon while he can easily let it alone. 
When we see the victim of an appetite that is 
ground into the very physical and moral being, 
that drives a man through all that enures to the 
drunkard's life, drives him through fire or water 
to appease it ; yea, when we see a man so enslaved 
that he would take a drink if he knew it would kill 
him in five minutes — as I think I have seen — it is 
not very much at random to say that such men 
cannot let it alone. But they can. So long as a 
man is conscious of what he is doing, he is a free 
moral agent, and his acts are of his own free will. 
Whatever his appetite or his impulses may be, 
though he had rather die than refrain from drink, 
and though the coveted potion be at his lips, yet 
he is the master of himself, and he can dash it 
away. Drunkards can reform — sometimes they 
do. If drunkenness is a disease, it is one that they 
deliberately bring upon themselves, and one that 
they can as deliberately cure if they will. They 
are not heroes or martyrs. They are the victims 
of their own sin and folly ; and however much we 
commiserate their condition and whatever we may 
do to raise them from their degradation, and how- 
ever guilty the liquor traders or others may be as 
accessories to their ruin, they themselves are ac- 



TO DRINK OR LET IT ALONE. 55 

countable for it all. Tbey have no reason to com- 
plain of anybody else. They can reform, and on 
their own heads is the guilt every day that they 
neglect it. 

But though all drunkards can reform yet they 
don't. Some people are getting very enthusiastic 
just now, and think the millennium is prett}^ nearly 
here, and all the drunkards are going to sign the 
pledge and keep it, and all this liquor curse will be 
out of the way in a few years. But so long as 
human nature is as it is, so long as the power of 
the liquor appetite is as it is, and so long as the 
State employs men to cultivate that appetite and to 
decoy its victims on and on to their ruin, it is only 
a question of time and circumstance for most of 
reformed drunkards to relapse. So it has been, 
and I cannot see anything in the Murphy move- 
ment to change all the laws by which this subject 
has hitherto^been governed. 

I do not say this to discourage the many worthy 
men who have taken the pledge because they 
needed it ; rather to arm them for the great battle 
that they have so earnestly engaged in. They can 
conquer — every one of them. This Murphy move- 
ment is a grand work — worthy of the support and 
encouragement of everybody, as one of the agen- 
cies for the overthrow of the liquor power in this 
country; but it will be found, in the sequel, that 
its utility will be much more in saving people from 
acquiring the appetite for drink, than in saving the 



56 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

drunkards. And I would not depreciate the value 
of the work in this behalf. Oh, how my heart has 
rejoiced to see its effect on a good many valuable 
men — any one of whom, arrested in their down- 
ward way, and raised to manhood again, to stay, is 
worth more than all the cost of all Coming's tem- 
perance work. All of which goes to show that all 
young men should let the drink alone while they 
can without inconvenience. 

On the whole, my young friends, this matter of 
drinking or letting it alone, when we come right 
down to the essence of it, is a question of only one 
side. There is nothing in favor of drink. The 
idea that formerly prevailed that intoxicating bev- 
erages are in any case necessary .or useful, is ex- 
tinguished. Xobody now but a small fraction of 
drinking men themselves pretends that they are 
ever useful. There is no redeeming quality in 
them. They are an unmitigated evil. All the ter- 
rible consequences that we see everywhere flowing 
from their use, are entirely without any sort of 
recompense. And now in your relation to this 
subject, independent to choose one side or the 
other, free and untrammeled to drink or let it alone, 
unaffected by the terrible impulse of appetite that 
you have seen drag so many others down to ruin, 
standing, as it were, at the junction of two open 
ways, at the threshold of active life, to take the 
way of drink is to hazard all without a possibility 
of gaining anything ; with fourteen chances to one, 



TO DRINK OR LET IT ALONE. 5T 

as we have seen, against you ; if you should chance 
to be the fifteenth, you would only save yourself, 
with no possible gain for the fearful hazard ; you 
cast your soul and body into a lottery consisting 
of fourteen tickets written upon them destruction, 
to one of blank. I once saw an old hunter from 
the mountains, at a holiday bar-room carousal. 
lie brought some saddles of venison as his only 
currency. A half dozen sharpers induced him to 
put up this property as the stake of a game of 
chance, with his single chance in against the six, 
with no recompense to him and nothing for him to 
win save to win back his own. That man was a 
fool, a}^e a fool, but a fool because of drink. How 
much bigger fool is a young man, in his sober 
senses, clear-headed, independent, who can drink 
or let it alone, to deliberately set himself up, soul 
and body, all he is and all he hopes to be, the sub- 
ject of a game with fourteen chances against him, 
with just one chance against them all to win him- 
self back no better than when he started in. And 
this is exactly what every young man is doing 
who refuses to put himself in the line of total ab- 
stainers from intoxicating drink. 

But that is not all, my friends. In this game 
of chance, if you do not absolutely lose yourselves, 
it is impossible to win yourselves back as good as 
you went in. In these papers we have been discus- 
sing the subject of accumulating property. As 
we have seen, about one man in fifteen may drink 



58 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

regularly all his life without being a drunkard. — 
But that drinking may keep him poor all his life 
and take him to the poor house at last, without 
another fault in him. Or at any rate it will cost 
him enough to make him comfortably rich in old 
age. Now let us see what ten cents a day will cost 
a man ; and any regular moderate drinker will not 
get off for less than that surely. And I have 
worked out the problem considerably in detail to 
show the wonderful results of small sums saved and 
put to use, with the interest compounded annually 
for a course of years ; say 

1st period of ten years : Ten cents a day for 
ten years is $ 365.00 

For each year $36.50. Compound interest 
on $36.50 at 7 per cent, from the end of 
each year of ten up to the end of ten years 
— say on that sum for 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 
and*l years respectively, is 139.28 

Total first ten years - - - 504728 

2d period of 10 years: Compound interest 
on above sum for 10 years - 487.72 

Accumulation at 10 cents a day and inter- 
est as above, 504.28 

Total for 20 years .... 1,496.28 

3d period of 10 years: interest as aforesaid 
on last above sum - 1,447.13 

10 cents a day and interest as aforesaid - 504.28 

Total for 30 years - 3,447.69 

4th period of 10 years : interesi as aforesaid 
on last above sum - 3,334.44 

10 cents a day and interest as aforesaid - 504.28 

Total for 40 years - 7,286.41 

5th period of 10 years : interest as afore- 
said on last above sum - 7,047.06 

10 cents a day and interest as aforesaid - 504.28 

Total for 50 years .... $14,837.75 



TOBACCO. 59 

So it is clear enough that besides all the hazard 
of entire destruction that every young man runs 
when he persists in the habit of drink, there is in 
it a certainty of expenses that he cannot afford, and 
at the most moderate rate it is likely to make him 
a beggar in old age unless his income is large. 

In conclusion, in every aspect of this matter of 
drink, it is of supreme importance to every young 
man that he start out with a firm resolve to let it 
alone for life ; yea, there is scarcely a hope of him 
without such resolve. 



IX. 

TOBACCO. 



Naturally there is nothing more repulsive to the 
human organism and the human appetite than to- 
bacco. Usually it requires a long, persistent, sick- 
ening, disgusting trial to get the physical system 
inured to its deleterious effects so that the patient can 
endure its use in any form ; which is, I think, con- 
clusive physiological proof that it is essentially an 
injurious and dangerous substance to be introduced 
into the human body. And it has always been a 
mystery to me how the use of it was first invented ; 
and more so, how it is that a large majority of 
young men and boys will persist in punishing 
themselves to acquire the mastery over the repul- 
siveness and the initiatory poisonous effects of it, 
while, to say the least, it is admitted by all that 
generally it is not of any beneficial use whatever, 



60 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

but an entire waste of money to indulge in it. To 
go no further than this, these facts ought to be 
sufficient to induce every young man and boy who 
has not acquired the habit to refrain from the 
severe trial of habituating the system to the de- 
leterious effects of tobacco, so that they can be 
endured and the patient live along ; and also to 
impel all tobacco users who can control their own 
appetites to wean themselves from it. 

But there is a good deal more than that in this 
tobacco question. I shall not go into a scientific 
exposition of the pathological effect of tobacco 
upon the human machine ; it is sufficient for my 
purpose to state the general result. 

Tobacco, then, is a 

VIRULENT POISON. 

I believe this is asserted by all scientific men 
who have written upon the subject ; it has been 
demonstrated by them by numerous experiments, 
and nobody disputes it. I think it is self-evident 
that a human being cannot habitually indulge in 
any poison with impunity. The continuous habit 
must make inroads upon the vitality, must shorten 
life ; for the essential nature of poison is antagon- 
ism to the natural, physiological action of the phy- 
sical man — nutrition, depuration, etc. In plainer 
terms : the renewal of the constant waste of the 
substance of the human machine, and the ejection 
of the waste matter, through the various organs 
for that purpose provided, constitute life. To stop 



TOBACCO. 61 

this is death. To obstruct, retard or disturb it in 
any respect or in any degree, is disease of some kind 
The natural and inevitable effect of poison of an} r 
kind is to disturb and hinder these processes, or 
some of them ; so that the habitual introduction of 
any poison into the human system, even in the 
most minute doses, must necessarily engender dis- 
ease. This is its nature and office. There is no 
possibility of mistake about it. It is just as clear- 
ly a philosophic principle as that water runs down 
hill. Its inroads may be so gradual that the pa- 
tient may be insensible to them — usually it is so — 
and when they culminate in serious disease, or 
death even, the trouble is usually attributed to 
other causes. In fact it may, sometimes, be diffi- 
cult for the physician to judge how far his patient, 
under any form of disease, and all saturated with 
nicotine or any other poison, owes his ailments to 
the poison ; but every well informed physician does 
know that any disease is much more virulent and 
more likely to be fatal upon patients infected with 
any kind of poison than upon those who are free 
from it. 

We read of arsenic eaters with a great degree 
of horror and with commiseration for their fatuity. 
We know that they are killing themselves by inches, 
because we know that the human organism cannot 
indefinitely endure the contact of any substance 
that is inimical to life ; because we know that the an- 
tagonism between poison and human life cannot be 



62 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

reconciled. Now apply the same rule to the use 
of tobacco, and then observe the great variety of 
diseases that we know are superinduced by it, and 
even the frequent cases where we know its victims 
to be gradually killed outright by its excessive use, 
and I would like to know what we have to boast of 
over the arsenic eating tribes of people. 

We temperance people hold, and the fact is now 
pretty well established, that alcoholic drinks are 
poisonous, and hence it is that so many diseases 
are propagated by their use, and that their victims 
are so powerless to resist the inroads of any disease 
whatever; so that all drinking men's lives are 
shortened by the habit of drink. And yet, while 
we are preaching that fearfully true theory, a large 
majority of temperance men are constant users of 
the tobacco poison that probably fills as many 
premature graves as do alcoholic drinks. 

And therefore on a superficial view of this ques- 
tion of using tobacco or not, it seems unaccount- 
able that all tobacco users will not look this matter 
square in the face, ask themselves what all this 
waste of life is for, call a halt, resolve to be freemen 
and not slaves; and abandon the filthy, disgusting, 
suicidal habit forever. 

But when we go to the root of the matter ; es- 
pecially those of us who have been there, we find a 
reason for this perseverance in manifest wrong; 
the same reason that holds the inebriate to his cups 
— the depravity of appetite and the weakness of 



TOBACCO. 63 

human nature. "We exhort the men of drink to 
forego the indulgence of their perverted appetites. 
We enlarge on its uselessness,its waste, its wicked* 
ness, its destruction of life, etc.; we tell them the 
habit is in all respects a foolish and inexcusable 
one, we reach out the fraternal hand to them and 
tell them to come with us, that they can reject the 
tempter and be men again, but when a friendly 
hand is reached down to the temperance men of 
the tobacco fraternity, and their own medicine is 
offered them, and they are exhorted to give up the 
degrading, demoralizing, suicidal habit, that alters 
the case. Then, " oh, dear, that quid or cigar is so 
much of my comfort, so incorporated into my very 
being, if I go without it for half a day, oh, I am so 
all gone, and so out of sorts, and so, so, I don't 
know exactly how, that I must — I must. I know 
it is bad, wrong, hazardous, murderous, but thenit 
is not so bad as whisky, and this appetite of mine, 
oh, yes. I must have it. I will have it." 

That's the way temperance men, many of them, 
treat the subject of an intemperance which, if not 
quite as bad as that of drink, is very nearly akin 
to it, and in some of its phases identical with it. 
I know how this is, for I have been there. I know 
the power of the tobacco habit, for I was a slave to 
it for twenty y ears, and I now speak by authority. 
I have been free from it for ten 3* ears, and so I 
have a right to exhort others to come out from the 
degrading bondage. 



64 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Last spring a prominent business man took the 
Murphy pledge, and another prominent citizen, a 
temperance man, took an anti-tobacco pledge, to be 
kept as long as the former would keep his pledge. 
The Murphy man has held out faithful. The to- 
bacco man struggled a considerable time — strug- 
gled, and struggled, and fought and fought with 
that depravity of his, until, finally, he was over- 
powered. He got feeling so badly ! oh, he was so 
sick ! so sick ! he could not, no he could not live 
without his quid ; so he thought. But he can ; 
every man can. I have been through that mill and 
I know. That seeming necessity for the tobacco 
poison is just the same that the inebriate, or the 
habitual user of any other poison experiences on 
abstaining from it. The human system can become 
so inured to any sort of poison, in small doses, as 
not only to not suffer any conscious detriment, but 
to really seem to need it. It is so with liquor. 
When a man is dying with drink, nothing seems so 
good for him as more of it. So with arsenic eaters. 
And when a reforming tobacco sot gets so sick 
that he thinks he must have it back, it is only the 
change of the physiological conditions of the sys- 
tem caused by the substitution of natural aliment 
for the accustomed poison — the effect of nature in 
expelling the poison without a renewal of it ; in a 
word, the change to a healthy condition. That is 
all, and a suitable time will overcome all that ter- 
rible yearning and seeming physical necessity for 



TOBACCO. 65 

the deleterious drug, nature will repair the dam- 
age already done, so far as it is reparable, and at 
least rid the system of the accumulated festering 
corruption. 

The tobacco habit looks like a mere foolishness 
only. A man sucks a cigar or pipe, and puffs out 
the smoke, or munches his quid and spits out 
the juice ; that is all we see. If that were really 
all there is of it, it would be only a nonsensical 
waste of money. But in those processes there is a 
constant absorption of the poison of the tobacco, 
which creates that terrible appetite for more and 
more of it, driving the victim lower and lower in 
the thraldom of this depravity, accumulating and 
hoarding up more and more of the corruption and 
the irreparable effects of the filth and the poison, 
until so saturated and corrupted that he is more or 
lessa stench in the nostrils of the uncontaminated, 
and a ready prey for any epidemic or other disease. 

Now if the foregoing be true, I ask you, young 
men, and older men, too, to come with me up to a 
serious and candid consideration of the fearful na- 
ture of this tobacco problem as a public question, 
apart from its personal application to individuals. 

It is a physiological fact, written down by all 
scientific men who write on the subject, and that 
we can all see for ourselves, very often, that in 
the propagation of the human species, as in the 
lower animals, like produces like. There are fre- 
quent cases where the appetite for intoxicating 
5 



66 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

drinks is inherited from parents ; and I have 
known a case where a boy inherited the taste for 
tobacco. I knew a child born drunk, and remain- 
ed so so long as she lived — ten or twelve years. 
That is to say, she had the stagger and all the physi- 
cal manifestations of her father when drunk. These 
extra cases go to show that the physiological rule 
above stated inevitably applies to any kind of dis- 
sipation — transmitting its effects, more or less, 
always, from parent to child. The habitual tobacco 
user is a poisoned mass of physical humanity, 
always diseased, more or less, whether he knows it 
or not ; for the presence of poison in the body is 
always antagonistic to health. Now it is a physio- 
logical impossibility for the progeny of a corrupted, 
poisoned, diseased human body to be entirely free of 
taint from the parent ; sometimes more, sometimes 
less apparent. In some cases, as in scrofula, con- 
sumption, etc., it is unmistakable. In the infirmi- 
ties caused by alcoholic drinks, tobacco or other 
poisons, it is more difficult to trace them to their 
source, because their character is so various. But 
this one universal principle always holds good in 
procreation; health produces health; poison can- 
not produce health ; corruption cannot produce 
purity ; so that the progeny of tobacco users must 
be more or less imperfect and diseased, whether 
visible or not. 

Another universal law appertaining to the human 
machine is that a sound mind cannot be in an un- 



TOBACCO. 67 

sound body ; that is to say, the condition of the 
physical man always affects the mind more or less; 
any infirmity of the body always produces infirmity 
of mind ; so that the average soundness and vigor 
of mind of tobacco users must be, other things 
being equal, inferior to that of those who are free 
and uncontaminated. 

Furthermore : To this inherited tobacco infection 
must be added, all along, the current habit of the 
second generation of victims ; so that they have 
the inherited infirmity and the accumulating poison 
of their own sin to drag them down, and degener- 
acy, from generation to generation, must be very 
rapid in those who perpetuate the habit. We can- 
not know how much of the physical and mental 
infirmities of our people are engendered by tobacco, 
or how much superior we would be, as a people, 
without it. We have no statistics as to the 
proportion of our people that use tobacco ; but to 
count noses almost anywhere, I think it will be 
found that not less than nine-tenths of all the 
adult male population are in the habit ; and not 
only so, but it is so popular that almost universally 
the rising generation are going into it ; so that, 
unless a change takes place in the matter, it may be 
taken for granted that we are to be, practically, un- 
animous tobacco users — a nation of tobacco soaks. 
Now, apply the foregoing inexorable physiological 
laws to a nation of universal tobacco suckers, and 
the national degeneracy is fearful to think of. 



68 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Is this overdrawn? None but an Omniscient 
eye can discern how much of the physical, intellec- 
tual and moral defects of our people are caused by 
this particular vice, or how much better a people, 
in all that goes to make up the God-given manhood 
of the race, we would be if the tobacco poison had 
never been imbibed. But we can read in physio- 
logical law, and see in the visible effects of tobacco, 
the solemn, solid fact, that its damage to the race 
is incalculable. 

We compare this habit with that of drink, and 
usually rate its evils inferior to those of drink ; 
but if we consider the fact that the effects of to- 
bacco on the physical and mental degeneracy of 
the individual, and of families, are held by compe- 
tent physicians to be fully equal to those of drink ; 
and if we consider the further fact that the tobacco 
habit reaches, substantially, the entire adult male 
population, whereas more than one-half of the adult 
male population are free from the liquor habit, it is 
at least a question whether tobacco is not a greater 
evil to our country at large than intoxicating 
drinks. 

I do not know how much tobacco is used in this 
country, or how much its aggregate cost is, and I 
do not care to know ; but I can judge of the cost 
to individuals. And I know that some men pay 
enough for cigars to make a rich man poor in a 
good deal less than the ordinary period of active 
life, or to make a poor man rich if saved. They 



TOBACCO. 



69 



39 cts. 

- $1.56 " 
2.94 " 



do not know how much that one cigar costs them, 

or rather what that ten cents would be worth to 

them in a series of years if saved and put to use. 

Ten cents at seven per cent, interest, anually 

compounded, 

In 20 years is worth 
" 30 ""«-.-. 

u 4Q tt u u m 

" 50 «««-„.. 

Those who are wasting from ten to fifty cents a 
day for cigars can figure up what a day's cigar dis- 
sipation will cost them in any of those periods of 
time by multiplying those sums respectively by the 
number of tens in the day's debauch. 

I will here give a convenient table to show, at a 
glance, what a continuous expenditure of small 
sums every day for cigars, tobacco, liquor or any 
other useless indulgence, will amount to in a series 
of years. 

Interest 7 per cent. Compounded Annually : 





For 10 yrs. 


20 yrs. 


30 yrs. 


40 yrs. 


50 yrs. 


10 cents a day . . . 


$ 504.28 


$1,496.28 


$ 3,447.69 


$ 7,286.41 


$14,837.75 


20 cents a day... 


1,008.56 


2,992.56 


6,895.38 


14,572.82 


29,675.50 


30 cents a day . . . 


1,512.84 


4,488.84 


10,343.07 


21,859.23 


44,513.35 


40 cents a day... 


2,017.12 


5,985.12 


13,790.76 


29,145.64 


59,351.00 


50 cents a day... 


2,521.40 


7,481.40 


17,238.45 


36,432.05 


74,188.75 



You who are paying ten, twenty, thirty, forty or 
fifty cents a day for cigars can see by this table 
what that dissipation is costing you or your family 



10 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

in money. And I can point out a good many 
elderly men of my acquaintance who have kept 
themselves poor by these expenses for tobacco. 
And I can say to my young friends in this behali 
as I said in respect to drink, that unless their in- 
come be large, the tobacco habit will be sure to 
keep them poor all their lives. They can see it for 
themselves in these figures. 

As with the question of drinking or letting it 
alone, so with that of using tobacco or letting it 
alone; it is a question of only one side. There is 
nothing in its favor. It is of no possible bene- 
ficial use to any body. It is an unmitigated evil. 
All its serious damages to the race that I have im- 
perfectly illustrated are without any degree of com- 
pensation, either to the general public or to any 
individual. 

"Oh, now," we will be told, perhaps, "you are 
putting it too extravagantly. There is certainly 
some comfort in tobacco. There is some enjoy- 
ment in sucking a cigar, a pipe or a quid. People 
are not such fools as to incur all the expenses and 
endure all the troubles and humiliation of the filth 
of the tobacco habit without some gratification.' ' 
A correspondent of the Corning Journal says : 

"There is something in a pipe that provides a 
solace for many woes, and smooths the path of 
daily discontent." 

This is putting it on pretty thick to the credit 
of tobacco, but I freely concede that people would 



10BACC0. 71 

not endure all the confessed evils of tobacco with- 
out some seeming compensation — unless there were 
something about it that seems to be necessary, or 
useful or gratifying. Certainly not ; there is that 
something in tobacco. Let us see what it is. En- 
joyment or comfort is sometimes relative merely 
and not positive. A slight toothache is comfort- 
ing immediately after a hard toothache ; that is to 
say, a man will feel very good and enjoy it in 
comparison with the hard pain just palliated. But 
that is not to say that a slight toothache is desira- 
ble or comforting per se. It is preferable to the 
hard pain, and this is all. It is a choice of two 
evils. Any nostrum that has the effect of produc- 
ing a very distressing state of the human body, 
and then of relieving part of the difficulty by its 
continuous use, would seem to be necessary and 
useful. And such is exactly the effect of tobacco. 
This phase of the question was tersely and forcibly 
illustrated by the Rev. Dr. Xiles, about as follows : 
"Tobacco gives no positive enjoyment, but only re- 
lieves the complaint of an abased nature caused by 
its use." At most it can only supply a want crea- 
ted by itself. . 

A man smokes a cigar. He thinks it is a com- 
fort to him. It is. Why ? Because he has smok- 
ed before, and that preyious smoking has created a 
morbid condition of the system that seems to re- 
quire a continuation of it, and he feels better in 



72 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

supptying the demand of the morbid craving than 
by denying it. But compare him with a man who 
never smoked and the latter is clearly the more 
comfortable of the two. He thinks he cannot do 
without it. He cannot without great discomfort 
for the time being. It saves him from a distress, 
only, and is not a positive enjoyment. The man 
who never smoked has no such distress, has no 
need of such remedy, and his comfort is entirely 
superior to that of the other in sucking his cigar 
or pipe. 

And I can vouch for all this from my own ex- 
perience. There never was a time during my 
tobacco servitude when I did not regret having 
imbibed the habit ; never a time when I would not 
have paid any reasonable amount of money to buy 
off the appetite if it could have been done ; know- 
ing as I did that the balance of enjoyment was in 
favor of abstinence, provided that the appetite, 
or disease, caused by its use, could be out of the 
way. And now, with that appetite all gone, I 
know that I was not mistaken then. I know that 
indulgence in tobacco is only a partial relief from 
the physical distresses caused by its use, and the 
balance of comfort is in favor of abstinence. 

And I think that most of tobacco sots will agree 
with me in all this. They will agree that in com- 
parison with the uncontaminated, there is no posi- 
tive enjoyment in tobacco, and that they would 



TOBACCO. 7 3 

gladly reform if they could. They can. Now we 
come to the question 

HOW TO QUIT. 

There is no mysterious process to go through- 
nothing complicated. The way to quit is to quit. 
Take it absolute, total, simple, plain. It is not an 
easy thing to do. It is a big battle to fight, and 
you must fight it out alone. There is nothing to 
aid 3^ou but your own free will, under God. There 
is no substitute or palliative that can aid you. 
And you cannot taper off. You must take the bull 
by the horns at once — the whole of him. I have 
thrown my tobacco away more than a hundred 
times and become pretty nearly weaned, when I 
would find my fingers in somebody's tobacco box 
— just a very little to taper off with — when the en- 
tire old demon would be instantly aroused, as with 
whiskey sots, and in five minutes I must have 
more, and then more and more until I would be 
back to the full use again. So I found that there 
could be no half way work. It must be total ab- 
stinence or total slavery. And now, with the ap- 
petite all gone, the smallest taste would at once 
require more, and I would have the battle to fight 
over again. Like the reformed drunkard, I tell 
my experience for the benefit of others who ought 
to reform. It is nothing to boast of, but is a 
humiliating confession to make. I make it for the 
encouragement of those who want to reform but 



14 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

think they cannot. As hard a thing as it is to do. 
every man can do it if he will. 

And yet I do not expect to see many tobacco sots 
reform. They will not. Though they know that 
their tobacco is poisoning the very fountains of 
life, is of no possible benefit to them in any respect, 
not even a pleasure per se, is in all respects de- 
rogatory to high toned manhood, costs in money 
what cannot be afforded, and will inevitably shorten 
life ; yet is free from some of the worst effects of 
alcoholic drinks, and they have not the extreme 
incentive to reform that the liquor drunkard has ; 
the culmination of its damaging effects seems to 
be remote, and the distresses of the weaning pro- 
cess are now. The terrible physical demand for the 
constant supply of the poison is now, and they will 
furnish it at the cost of unknown years of what 
should be their natural life. No, they will not 
stop. There is no hope of any extensive reform in 
that direction. 

But I think there is a way to cure this great 
national vice. The remedy is in the rising genera- 
tion. a As with' the liquor habit, so in this ; it is 
easier to save a hundred from learning the art of 
tobacco using than to cure one after he has learned 
it. And more than this : It would probably, by a 
a general agitation of this subject, be easier to 
save ten boys and young men from the tobacco 
habit than one from liquor, for the very obvious 
reason that tobacco is not attractive to a boy or 



TOBACCO. 15 

young man until he has gone through the severe 
punishment of seasoning the system to the poison ; 
whereas liquor, in the palatable forms in which it 
is presented to the novice, is never repulsive. In^ 
fact I believe that one-half of the public sentiment 
against tobacco that now exists against the use of 
intoxicating drinks would save all of the rising 
generation from learning the habit. 

And now a word to the youth who are yet un- 
contaminated by this tobacco vice. You see that 
there is nothing in favor of your enduring the pun- 
ishment of learning how to use tobacco. There is 
no good in it, but only evil ever and always. 
There is no enjoyment in it as compared to your 
present enjoyment in freedom from its mastery. 
It will cost you in money what you cannot afford ; 
it will poison your very fountains of life ; it will 
land you in premature graves, and degenerate your 
posterity. And a boy or a young man does not 
look any better sucking a cigar or a pipe on the 
street or elsewhere than free from it. I know it is 
fashionable to learn the art ; but even now, with 
nearly all the adult male population in its use, 
there is no ban upon the abstainers. It is rather 
the other way. The smokers, with their tobacco 
fumes, are excluded from the better class of rail- 
road cars, and from most decent parlors, and from 
the society of respectable ladies in general ; so 
that, after all, so far as the fashion is concerned, it 
is really more respectable, and high-toned, and 



T6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

easier, to abstain than to indulge. There is no rea- 
son whatever for you to go out of your way to per- 
vert your nature by acquiring this vicious habit. 
Don't you do it. 

In conclusion, my appeal is to the ladies. You 
are practically unanimous against tobacco. You 
are always sufferers by it. I need not tell you 
how. You know all about that. You can appre- 
ciate the force of all I have said on the subject, as 
men who use the article cannot. You can see the 
vast importance of a reform. It is in your power 
to effect it, not by converting your husbands, your 
brothers or sons, who are addicted to the habit — 
but by building up a public sentiment against it, 
to be applied to the rising generation. Save, oh 
save the boys from this terrible vice, and in anoth- 
er generation we will be redeemed and disenthralled. 



X. 

GAMING. 

After a great temperance revival, gaming tables 
were proposed as amusement for the new converts, 
to pacify them, and keep them from the dram shops. 
I don't know for certain which is the worse of the 
two. If drunkenness is any worse than gambling, 
it is only because there is more of it. In individual 
cases I have had occasion to know that the passion 
for gambling is more infatuating, more demoraliz- 
ing, more destructive than the appetite for intoxi- 
cating drinks. But gambling is not seen. It 



GAMING. t7 

skulks away out of sight. The drunkard cannot 
disguise his debauchery, but the habitual gambler 
sneaks away to a hell — yes it is rightly named, a 
gambling hell, for if any place upon earth is wor- 
thy of that name it is a den where gamblers con- 
gregate — the gambler sneaks away to a hell, unseen, 
to indulge the unholy passion at whatever cost ; 
for when this appetite is acquired it is even more 
the master of its victim than is the liquor appe- 
tite. There is nothing too dear or too sacred to be 
sacrificed on its altar. The outside world knows 
nothing of the extent of this gigantic vice, nothing 
of the number of these dens, or the victims ruined 
therein. 

But mere social games, parlor games, in the 
family, for amusement, not for money, are harm- 
less, we are told. And so we may say that social 
wines, social brandies, at home, in the parlor, with 
our friends, moderate drinking, are all harmless so 
long as pent up in moderate dimensions ; it is com- 
mon to say so at least. But this is the seed of 
most of the drunkenness in the land. Banish 
these fashionable " innocent" parlor drinking cus- 
toms, and intemperance would be greatly checked. 
And exactly so are the fashionable gaming tables, 
innocent games, family parlor games, the nurseries 
of the full grown gambling hells, which are one of 
the most effective nurseries of drink debauchery, 
and for aught that we can know, the original cause 
of more vice and crime and misery than is the in- 



78 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

temperance of drink. Young men do not go into 
them to learn the art and imbibe the passion, any- 
more than they go down into the lowest drunkeries 
to learn to drink. To show 

HOW IT WORKS, 

I will relate a case that occurred under my ob- 
servation. A coterie of high-toned young and 
middle aged men was formed for cards — for amuse- 
ment merely of course, and not for stakes at all ; 
that was not to be thought of; they would not 
gamble, oh no. Probably the parties had learned 
the art of handling the cards at home. They had 
their stated meetings and amused themselves. The 
more they met the more they needed the amuse- 
ment, and soon it came to be a meeting of every 
night. After a while it became too monotonous 
and dull without something to play for ; just a lit- 
tle ; anything to make the game interesting. So 
they put up a few sticks of candy. They would 
not gamble, oh no. They went on with that for a 
while, until that became too cheap, there was not 
interest enough in the game. They would not 
gamble, but they only put up some very small 
pieces of money, just to enhance the interest of the 
game. They then went on and on, adding to the 
interest of the game by increasing the size of the 
money stakes until the ability of the parties to 
raise money was the only limit. Then of course 
the passion reached out to wider fields. The mere 
local fraternity was too dull. 



GAMING. 79 

I had occasion to know all about one of that co- 
terie. He was a middle aged man with an inter- 
esting family ; a successful business man up to 
then ; supposed to be wealthy — he was sufficiently 
so ; for twelve years his ruling passion was the 
card table ; more and more his business was neg- 
lected from year to year until he scarcely gave it 
any attention at all — leaving all to others. As the 
stakes increased in size he became more and more 
infatuated ; sometimes he won, which only in- 
creased his infatuation ; other gambling centres 
were visited ; from year to year all available money 
was swallowed up in that remorseless vortex ; and 
with a name of wealth he died a bankrupt, and left 
a worthy family penniless. 

Thousands of similar cases are constantly going 
on all over the land — much of it unknown to the 
public — always culminating in ruin, ruin, RUIN ; 
for even the successful professional gambler's life 
is a failure ; a failure in all that this life is worth 
living for — in being of no possible benefit to his 
fellow man, in being only an excrescence upon the 
body politic, in the fact that the world is the 
worse for his having lived in it. And not only so, 
he is usually a failure in money too, for it is noto- 
rious that the gains of the gambler are speedily 
wasted, and he is as poor as his unsuccessful vic- 
tims. He is ruined too. 

Gambling is essentially and intrinsically dishonest 
— criminal. There is no redeeming feature about 



80 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

it. It is worse than selling whiskey ; for this busi- 
ness does give something in exchange for money, 
whether that something has any value or not, it is 
something that the buyer thinks he wants, and 
which has cost something; whereas the gambler 
seeks his comrade's money without any pretence of 
value for it. The whole scheme and system arc 
confessedly devices and efforts of a company of 
men to despoil each other of their money ; in prin- 
ciple as clearly so as to purloin it from a safe. 
Many and various associations are formed for 
mutual benefit. Even thieves and robbers affiliate 
for mutual aid. But gamblers, and only gamblers, 
associate for mutual injury, spoliation, plunder, 
robbery ; for when they sit down to their game it 
is for the express purpose of despoiling one another. 

It is not surprising that such a pursuit as this — 
founded in rapacity and wrong — is so terribly 
demoralizing, corrupting its subject through and 
through, extinguishing all moral perceptions, and 
incapacitating him for participation in any of the 
sweet and amiable sympathies and associations of 
refined society ; in short, a soul of man in ruin. 

I think it is an unmitigated evil. There is no 
possible good to come of it. In its incipient 
stages, when the play is for amusement as it is 
called , it is, to say the least, a profitless amusement. 
It kills time, and that is all. No instruction, im- 
provement, or discipline of mind is left from it. 
Nothing whatever of value or of satisfaction re- 



GAMING. 81 

suits. It is an absolute waste of time. I cannot 
conceive of any amusement so entirely profitless 
as this. There certainly is none other so hazard- 
ous. And if there is any fleeting pleasure in the 
senseless jargon of spades, and hearts, and clubs, 
and trumps, when we set that off against one lost 
human soul, and one ruined family from the excess 
of that sort of so-called amusement ; make this ap- 
plication ye advocates of parlor card tables, and 
ye young men now amusing yourselves by this 
practice, and ask yourselves is there any pleasure 
in it ? Link your evening's entertainment with its 
unavoidable consequences, to somebody, if not to 
yourselves, and enjoy yourselves if you can. 

Probably the very common propensity to desire 
to get something for nothing is one of the results 
of the depravity of the race. There seems to be 
an innate disposition to shirk the sentence " in the 
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread;" and so 
there is a natural tendency to seize upon any thing 
that promises something of value without a corres- 
ponding value rendered — something for nothing. 
This is the fundamental idea of gambling ; and it 
is to be seen in many attractive phases other than 
card playing; from the biggest lotteries down 
through all the innumerable inventions of gift en- 
terprises and other frauds where something is os- 
tensibly offered for nothing, down to the church 
fair where a grab bag or a cake with a ring in it is 
gambled off. And all this takes. No matter how 



82 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

absurd a scheme of swindling is proposed, it will 
find takers if it offers something for nothing. Let 
an unknown man advertise that he will give a 
hundred dollars for one for all the money remitted 
to him in advance, and he would probably get a 
good many dollars. And so all the various swin- 
dling inventions, however preposterous, that are 
from time to time introduced through the mails 
and otherwise, always meet with more or less of 
patronage. It is all on the principle of getting 
something for nothing. I tell you, young man, it 
is all a fallacy. It cannot be done. Values are 
not produced by hocus pocus. If you should suc- 
ceed, by any gambling process, in filching another's 
money, you cannot afford it. It will be too costly. 
First it will cost you what money cannot replace — 
the principle of manhood ; and, secondly, it will 
cost you all hope of permanent prosperity, for dis- 
honest gains are sure to be fleeting. No, you can- 
not afford it. The only safe foundation is honest 
industry, honest business, value for value. This 
and only this will stand the test of time and 
eternity. 

The conclusion of the whole matter, young peo- 
ple, and older people too, is that your fashionable 
amusement parlor card tables are the training- 
schools that supply the customers to the numerous 
but unknown number of gambling hells that every- 
where abound, with all the consequences that I 
have so imperfectly described. You cannot afford 



GAMINCJ, 83 

it. I am aware that there are a great many very 
excellent people who sneer at such arguments as 
these — who will say that it is entirely nonsensical 
to say that parlor games for amusement are the 
nurseries of the full grown gambling hells, etc. I 
am aware that a good many Doctors of Divinity 
and Judges, and other high-toned people in- 
dulge in parlor cards, and never think of gambling ; 
but the question is whether that is not so much 
the worse for those excellent people, and not any 
the better for the parlor games ? I do not say that 
such parlor games, per se, are chargeable with the 
damages resulting from gambling ; but only that 
they are the nurseries of the full grown gambling 
hells ; which is said to be nonsensical. Let us see. 
A "nursery" is "that which forms and educates." 
It cannot be denied, I think, that the practice of 
parlor card playing always educates its subjects in 
the same arts and processes that constitute the arts 
and processes of the gambling hells or some of 
them. The identical games are learned in fashion- 
able parlors that are played for money stakes in 
regular gambling houses, and the habit of playing 
such games is there formed. And will it be denied 
that more or less of the customers of gambling 
houses are of those who learned these games in 
parlors ? And then are not the parlor games lit- 
erally nurseries of gambling hells ? More than 
this ; are not all the customers of gambling houses, 
or nearly all of them, persons who have learned 



84 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

the art of card playing in respectable places, where- 
real gambling is not thought of, whether parlors or 
not, where Doctors of Divinity who believe in the 
amusement would not think it disreputable to be 
found ? I think this must be so, for it is self-evi- 
dent that very few men or boys ever go into a 
"full grown gambling hell" to learn how to play 
cards. That is not what those places are for. 
Their sphere in the devil's programme is higher than 
that. It is to accommodate those who want to 
gamble for money ; and I venture to say that no 
man or boy ever went into such a place and risked 
money in a game of cards the first time he ever 
played. So it is clear enough that these innocent 
card tables as they are called, do actually furnish 
nearly or quite all the customers to the gambling 
hells. Are they not their nurseries then ? 

I have not said that all who play cards at home 
ever become gamblers ; I shall not say that, for I 
know very well that it is not so ; but I think the 
facts will bear me out in saying that all, or nearly 
all, gamblers get their primary education in par- 
lors or other places where gambling for money is 
not carried on. And it is pretty safe to say that 
without such preliminary training they would not 
become gamblers. 

And respectable, high-toned Christian card 
players and their apologists tell us that it is non- 
sensical to say that there is any danger in this 
fundamental education for the gambler's trade. 



GAMING. 85 

They make it respectable, and fashionable, and 
high-toned. They say to young men and boys : 
" Go on and learn all the mysteries of old sledge, 
seven up, whist, poker, and all other card pro- 
cesses ; practice on them in your leisure hours ; it 
is good for you ; and anybody who does not believe 
in that is a fanatic." And so, with such instruc- 
tion, and such habits — in very many cases amount- 
ing to a passion — fixed upon them, young men go 
out from their homes ; and it is only a question of 
time and circumstance for many of them to find 
themselves in gambling houses. 

There is a celebrated Doctor of Divinity in New 
York who advocates moderate drinking, and the 
liquor trade in respectable places, and in a respect- 
able way, according to law. He thinks it is non- 
sensical on the part of fanatics to claim that the 
moderate drinking customs are the nurseries of 
intemperance, or in any way objectionable. Tem- 
perance parlor card players can quite easily see 
that mistake as to moderate drinking, but it makes 
a difference whose ox is gored. They cannot see 
anything but good in moderate card playing, 
although not denying that, as with drink, the mod- 
erate is the seed of the immoderate, or that the 
immoderate is one of the greatest evils of the day. 

As before stated, if moderate drinking could 
always be pent up within moderation, and if cards 
could always be limited to moderation, in respecta- 
ble parlors, then the nonsense of the fanatics on 



&6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

both subjects would be a good deal more apparent 
than it is. 

In conclusion, ye men and women of the respect-, 
able parlor card tables, you steady balanced heads 
who can indulge in this habit without turning your 
brains, without imbibing the passion that you know 
is all the time ruining thousands, you don't believe 
in gambling, you don't design to encourage it or to 
aid the gambler's profession in any way, but don't 
you see on which side of this great question your 
power is wielded ? Don't you see that it is by 
your precept and example that the rising genera- 
tion are all the time learning the arts that are iden- 
tical with the gambler's arts ? Don't you see that 
this training of the young is what eventually fills 
the gambling houses with their customers ? Don't 
you see, therefore, that you are under a fearful re- 
sponsibility to God and humanity for the part that 
you are acting, for the power that you are wielding, 
upon this great question ? Young man, remember 
that these parlor card tables are the nurseries of 
the full grown gambling hells — I must repeat it, 
for it is true. These respectable advocates of these 
dangerous practices are dangerous teachers. You 
cannot afford to follow them. 



XL 

ON CHOOSING AN OCCUPATION. 

In a former number I have inculcated the idea 
that in the order of nature's God, it is necessary 



ON CHOOSING AN OCCUPATION. 87 

for everybody, irrespective of wealth or position, 
to do some kind of work. The choice of a life 
work is a matter of no small importance ; for a 
mistake in this may be a bar to a man's usefulness 
and fatal to success. It is better to be a good 
mechanic, or even a good hod carrier, or dirt dig- 
ger than a poor lawyer dragging along through 
life in poverty and under a continual strain for 
bread and butter, who might have been comfort- 
ably independent as a mechanic or farmer. I have 
seen men try to preach the gospel who would have 
served God and their race much better by mauling 
rails. The way God has fixed things for us, a large 
majority of the race must necessarily be employed 
in physical labor — cultivating the soil, and in the 
multitudinous other vocations by which all the 
necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life are 
really produced. These occupations, though too 
often looked down upon by the unthinking, the 
superficial and the vain, as derogatory to what 
they denominate the higher grades of humanity, 
are really as respectable, in the eyes of all sensible 
and really high-toned people, as any others. When 
God, in His infinite wisdom, made it necessary to 
the life and well-being of our race that all these 
varieties of work should be done, He also made 
our physical nature to correspond with that neces- 
sity, so that every man and every woman would 
be the better for doing some of it. And He did 
not make it derogatory to any man or woman to 



88 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

have a hand in it. When he made the necessity 
that the ground should be tilled, that mines should 
be worked, that buildings should be built, that the 
thousand other trades should be carried on, that 
food should be cooked, that raiment should be 
cleansed, that dishes should be washed, and that 
the hundred other things appertaining to the habi- 
tation should be done, He did not make it disrep- 
utable for any man, woman or child to take a 
reasonable and suitable share in any of such work; 
and any public sentiment that seeks to degrade 
such service is false in philosophy, false to human- 
ity, false to God. 

And when enthusiastic working men and their 
attorneys, in their quarrels with employers and 
with other vocations, assert that they are the sole 
producers of wealth, they are just as false. With- 
out the other departments of labor, as we have 
them in civilized life, the physical labor classes 
would be helpless, and we would degenerate to 
barbarism. A concurrence of all the forces of the 
country — physical, intellectual, moral, is what pro- 
duces wealth and refinement. No vocation can be 
dispensed with save those that produce no good 
and valuable result, as all the various grades of 
crime against the State, against man, against God. 

As it is so arranged in the economy of nature 
that a considerable majority of the race necessarily 
must be employed in what is called manual labor 
in order that all the commodities of civilization 



ON CHOOSING AN OCCUPATION. 89 

shall be produced, so I think a like majority are 
fitted for those employments only ; that is they are 
so constituted that they cannot successfully prose- 
cute any other calling. The general constitutional 
adaptation, and not the education or training, 
governs in this behalf. There is something for 
everybody to do 3 but it is not in the power of 
every man to be a skillful lawyer, or merchant or 
clergyman, or any other trade that is prosecuted 
chiefly by brain work and brain force. Schools 
cannot do it. 

But any able bodied man, with common sense, 
can learn to dig dirt, chop wood, till the soil, or do 
ordinary mechanic work ; and it is only stating a 
fact, and not making it, or wishing it to be so, 
when we say that a large majority of men are only 
adapted to such pursuits. 

And here is where the mistakes are made in 
choice of occupation, that overflows the learned 
professions, the marts of trade, and other vocations 
of an intellectual character. Rich men sometimes 
want their sons to do something ; and, as a matter 
of course, irrespective of their adaptability, they 
think it must be some high-toned calling, as it is 
called — something else than any kind of physical 
employment. Some people not rich get the same 
hallucination, that it is a great object for their 
boys to go into a learned profession, and so they 
strain a point to fit them for it by education, 
whether they have the suitable intellectual capacity 



90 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

or not. I think the result is that almost every- 
where there are too many lawyers, doctors, mer- 
chants, and others of light and so-called respectable 
employments to do the business ; and one-half 
of them would be much better off in some work 
adapted to their capacity, where they would be 
sure of business and sure of sufficient success for 
a comfortable and independent livelihood, if they 
had been trained to it. 

The choice of a trade, then, I think, is quite 
easily made, as between intellectual occupations 
and those of physical labor. It seems to me that 
any boy not exhibiting peculiar adaptation to the 
former should not throw himself away in the fruit- 
less effort to compete, in a market always full, with 
those so superior to him that he is sure to fail, or, 
at best, to drag through a life of inferiority and 
consequent poverty, when he might, in another 
sphere of labor, attain to respectability and inde- 
pendence. 

And I think there is not much danger of making 
a mistake in choosing this latter course ; for it is 
not often any damage to a boy to begin life at the 
plow, or in a shop, or at any other hard work, and 
if there is anything else in him it will be pretty 
sure to come out in due time, and such an appren- 
ticeship is sure to make the better professional 
man, or business man of any kind. 

And in choosing a life work I think it should be 
remembered that a simple superiority of brain 



ON CHOOSING AN OCCUPATION. 91 

power is not sufficient to ensure success in any in- 
tellectual vocation, without the propensity to in- 
dustry, perseverance, push, work. Without these, 
genius itself cannot succeed. 

Senator Sumner, with his great faculties, achieved 
his distinction by hard work. Here is a sample of 
how he began, and it is notorious that he kept it up 
through life. When at a law school he wrote to a 
classmate as follows : 

" Late to bed and early to rise, and full employment 
while up, is what I am trying to bind myself to. The 
labor ipse valuptas I am coveting. I had rather be a 
toad and live upon a dungeon's vapor than one of 
those lumps of flesh that are christened lawyers, and 
who know only how to wring from quibbles and ob- 
scurities that justice which else they never could reach ; 
who have no idea of law beyond its letter, nor of 
literature beyond their term reports and statutes. If I 
am a lawyer, I wish to be one, at least, who can dwell 
upon the vast heaps of law matter, as the temple of 
which the majesty of right has taken its abode; who 
will aim, beyond the mere letter, at the spirit— the 
law — and who will bring to his aid a liberal and culti- 
vated mind. Is not this an honest ambition ? If not, 
reprove me for it. A lawyer is one of the best or worst 
of men, according as he shapes his course. He may 
breed strife, and he may settle dissensions of years." 

Brain power is wasted without the propensity to 
utilize it ; while with this propensity largely de- 
veloped we often see men of mediocre natural en- 
dowments rise to eminence ; so that these two 
qualities in the make-up of a boy — brain power, 
and the tendency to utilize it — are what make up 
the real force of a man for any kind of life work. 
And without the latter any man is the better off in 
some humble calling as the servant of others, who 
tell him every morning what to do. 



92 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Then, as to the choice of the particular trade. 
Now and then we find a man of great brain powers, 
and so evenly balanced, that he can be reasonably 
successful in almost any thing. Such a man is safe 
to begin anywhere. As a farmer, mechanic, mer- 
chant, or professional man, he will rise to eminence 
if he energizes and utilizes the powers that are in 
him. 

But most men, of larger or smaller calibre, have 
an aptitude, more less, for some particular call- 
ing, which should by all means be encouraged. A 
man with a penchant for the law would not succeed 
as well in the ministry. A man whose call is to 
the gospel will not be likely to succeed in another 
profession. Some are largely gifted in particular 
arts — sculpture, painting, music, etc. — they cannot 
be very good for any thing else. A prodigy in 
mathematics cannot make a good lawyer. A man 
deficient in mathematical talent cannot succeed as 
an engineer. One who takes naturally to 
mechanic work should not suffer himself to be 
forced into anything else. On the whole, wher- 
ever there is a marked propensity in a boy to any 
particular line of work, it is generally safe to cul- 
tivate such propensity. 

Aside from these special gifts, and as to those 
destined to some kind of physical labor, I think 
the cultivation of the soil, at this day, offers the 
greatest inducements to young men. In these 
times of depression, when mechanics and most 
other hirelings find employment precarious — thou- 



HELP. 93 

sands out of work and helpless, we can appreciate 
the comfort of the farmer in his independent home 
drawing upon his fat soil for his bread and butter, 
laughing at the commotions of capital and labor, 
secure in the enjoyment of the comforts of life, 
whether other schools keep or not. 

And when we traverse the great expanses of 
rich and uncultivated lands, awaiting only the 
hand of labor to minister to the wants of unlimited 
populations, it seems to me that agriculture is to- 
day the permanent interest for the larger propor- 
tion of our young men to turn their attention to. 

In conclusion, if every boy would adopt the 
vocation that God has fitted him for the best, in- 
stead of trying to strain nature by trying to do 
something else, I think the trades would be about 
rightly proportioned, and every one would be 
where he could enjoy life the best, for God has 
adapted the race, in general, to the supplying of 
the wants of the race to the best advantage. A 
man with a good mechanical talent but with none 
for the law, will be miserable in vainly trying to be 
a lawyer. He had better be a good mechanic, yea, 
a poor mechanic, or a dirt digger than that. And 
so of all other trades. Follow nature. 



XII. 

HELP. 

When I was about twenty-one, I thought some- 
body ought to help me to a start in life. An old 



94 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

friend told me that " the way for young men to get 
on in the world is by their industry and good con- 
duct to establish a credit and help themselves." 
And so I went to work to help myself. Young 
men usually think as I did, that somebody ought 
to help them. But I am satisfied now, upon forty 
years of experience and observation, that that kind 
of help to a young man — help that he does not 
command upon his own real merit, on business 
principles — help rendered as matter of friendship 
and favor — is the very worst thing that can happen 
to him in a business way. The best of all help for 
a young man is to help himself. And this is the 
only safe and wise condition precedent to any ex- 
traneous help — the only thing that can make such 
help available and profitable. A young man who 
has not commenced to help himself cannot be 
pushed into any success by other people's help. 
Usually any money invested in him will be wasted. 
This seems to be the law and we cannot help it. I 
have seen a good deal of this. I have seen a good 
many rich men's sons, having no idea that they 
must help themselves, helped into promising busi- 
ness, and amount to nothing. And I have seen 
the other kind of young men begin by helping 
themselves, and then in due time, they are pretty 
sure to get all the other help that they need. So, 
young man, it seems to me that the only sure way 
to begin the world is to begin to help yourself, 
and not begin by depending upon others. If you 



HELP. 95 

have not a rich father, probably that is the better 
for 3^ou ; if you have, his riches cannot make you; 
you must help yourself, or any help you get from 
him will be of no avail. 

I know a Corning boy, twenty-three years old, 
whose opportunities for earning money have been 
meagre, and he has saved of his earnings five hun- 
dred dollars. This is a good nest egg to start out 
with to be somebody, and to do some good in the 
world. He is helping himself. Whenever he needs 
any other help he will be able to get it, on business 
principles, if he keeps on in that way. Fathers 
can afford to help that kind of boys, if able, when- 
ever the proper time comes ; but they will get 
along anyhow, for they start out with the best of 
all help — self help. And I see a great many of the 
other kind of boys and men, and I have seen them 
all along through life, who are always grumbling 
that they never have been helped. It never occurs 
to them that they never help themselves, or that 
any extraneous help would not be of any permanent 
good to them until they learn the art of helping 
themselves. 

I don't think that any person has any just claim 
upon any other person for help ; not even child 
upon parent, however able the latter may be. I 
know the common opinion is that a rich man 
ought to shoulder his children along through life. 
But it is a false theory. The true philosophy of 



96 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

parentage, in this respect, is that a boy, grown up 
to man's estate, with sound health and a reasonable 
education, is an independent, self-existent being, 
and no longer a part of his father and mother. 
He has all the means of self-support, and the order 
of nature is that he shall cut loose from parental 
care and provide for himself; and he has no moral 
or other right to depend upon parents to carry 
him through. It is a reversal of nature. It extin-* 
guishes a man's manhood and individuality, and 
makes him a mere speck of his father. 

All this being so, a rich man and his children 
being separate independent atoms in the thing that 
we call society, each pursuing his or her own incli- 
nation in life, each presumed to be as able to take 
care of himself or herself as have been the parents, 
I do not see what valid claim those children have 
upon the parent's bounty when they die. Their 
whole duty is done when the children are respect- 
ably brought up and educated ; and if a father 
chooses to exclude a dissipated, or otherwise un- 
worthy child, from his will, or to exclude him for 
any other reason satisfactory to himself, that is his 
own business entirely; his property is his own ; no- 
body has any just claim upon him for any of it ; he 
may do with it as he will ; in the language of the 
courts, "he is the disposer of his own property, and 
his will stands as a reason for his actions." And 
then the public criticisms of a Yanderbilt and other 



HELP. 97 

rich men upon the making of their wills to suit 
themselves, are purely gratuitous and meddlesome. 
It is none of the public's business. 

But all this is not to say that people should not, 
usually, leave their property, or a suitable share of 
it, to their children or their nearest relatives, or 
that parents, during life, should not prudently aid 
their children, when, as I have said, they are found 
worthy of it. I mean to say only that every man's 
duty is to guard his fortune, so far as he can. 
against being appropriated to bad uses. He has no 
more right to invest it in vice and debauchery in- 
directly, by giving it to a dissipated boy, than di- 
rectly. 

Furthermore: while in the main, the order of 
nature, and of law, and of society is that ever}' one 
must depend on self help, we are not to be entirely 
selfish all through life. In some sense a man must 
depend chiefly upon himself, but every one is al* 
ways dependent on others after all. Solitary and 
alone, cut off from association with others, a man 
would be miserable indeed. Association, mutual 
dependence, are inseparable from civilisation. 
This, however, can all be on selfish business princi- 
ples. But there are other kinds of help to one 
another that are worthy of our consideration if 
our lives are not to be shut into our own dear little 
selves, if we are not to be entirely selfish, if our 
little hearts can in any case reach out beyond our 
own little domicils, if we are not to steel ourselves 
7 



98 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

against doing any good in the world. If we are 
not to be all this, there are a good many things 
that will come in our way to do in the way of help 
to others that they have no particular claim upon 
us to do. There are many little things always oc- 
curring wherein we can help one another, where 
there is really no mutuality, for the time being, but 
costing nothing, or next to nothing, save a little 
trouble or labor, but of importance to the ^recipient. 
I have seen people so bound up within their own 
little soul boundaries that it was impossible for 
them to render a favor of any kind to a neighbor, 
to the amount of a cent, without two cents in plain 
sight coming back. I think the pleasure of any 
little neighborly courtesies is sufficient pay. I 
have sometimes taken a good deal of comfort in 
doing little matters of business for poor people 
who could not afford to pay professional men for 
the service. Only a little work for me, but of great 
importance, perhaps, to them. Opportunities are 
always occurring to do little helps to one another 
— and sometimes bigger ones — with no essential 
loss to the donor. 

But sometimes such things will not be appreci 
ated — i. e., afterwards. People will be ungrateful. 
It is of the depravity of human nature to be so. 
No matter for that. The seryice is not done for 
the pay of gratitude or for any other pay, except 
the satisfaction of doing a little good for some- 
body. This we cannot be robbed of by any con- 



HELP. 99 

duct of the beneficiary. I once had occasion to 
lend a near and dear friend a considerable sum of 
money. I could do it about as well as not, but it 
was of considerable importance to her. Years 
elapsed, and when I wanted the matter arranged 
so that I would get my money back sometime, 
with legal interest, she thought she was injured. 
She thought I had wronged her. The transaction 
was purely as a favor on my part, and not as a 
matter of business ; for I could have invested that 
money to much better advantage. She thinks I 
wronged her ; and she is now my enemy. She in- 
tends to be a good Christian woman, but it makes 
a difference which way the money is to go — to or 
from. It was all right when it was going to her ; 
when wanted from her it alters the case. Poor 
weak human nature cannot bear that so well. And 
now, shall I steel myself against all the better im- 
pulses of my nature on that account ? Shall I 
sever all the ties of humanity and civilization, and 
swear that I will live only for myself? Shall I 
forego the pleasure of trying to make the world 
the better for my having living in it ? and all this 
because of the weakness of an erring one ? Not 
at all. Although we are not to shoulder others 
and carry them along, yet we are not to shut our- 
selves up within our own little shells and exclude 
all but self from our sympathies because we do not 
find perfection in hujn^n^to. Thetis not what we 
are for. 



100 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEX. 

The foregoing general principles may, perhaps, 
be applied to all questions of help, and I might 
stop here ; but there is another phase of help that 
is worth a paragraph specifically ; and that is the 
lending of credit — endorsing notes, or incurring 
other obligations for others. It is a very safe rule, 
that some people adopt, to never do such a thing 
under any circumstances. But I think this rule 
comes too much within the rule of entire selfish- 
ness. If we live among civilized people, and pro- 
pose to live in a civilized way, and to exercise any 
of the impulses of humanity and good neighbor- 
hood, sometimes the very best way to do this is to 
lend a name. Sometime a man must have bail in a 
considerable sum or submit to large loss by un- 
just judgment, or be imprisoned on false charges. 
Sometimes it will occur to the soundest business 
men that endorsement of their paper is indispen- 
sable to them. And there are various emergencies 
when such, or similar helps to one another, are emi- 
nently proper. Of course such obligations should 
not be incurred recklessly. They are purely mat- 
ters of favor. Nobody has any right to ask them ; 
and they never should be granted save in extraor- 
dinary emergencies, and on reasonable grounds of 
safety to the signer ; this to be ascertained by the 
debtors means of meeting the obligation, eventu- 
ally if not immediately, and from his habits 
of life and business. I don't think that any man 
has a right to endorse a note for another whose 



MARRYING. 101 

wife wears diamonds or any other such useless 
luxuries. Such a man has no right to owe any 
notes, or rather, a man who is in debt in his 
business has no right to indulge in such fripperies. 
Usually it is only a question of time for him to go 
under, and endorsers must look out. On the whole, 
in helping one another in this respect, we should 
not run any great risk. This is more objectionable, 
and more damaging to society and good neighbor- 
hood than to never lend the helping hand at all. 

Such, in brief, I think are the general principles 
upon which young men should look for help from 
others, and upon which they should extend help to 
others as they go along through life. They may 
not be popular, but if they were practiced more the 
world would be the better for it. 



XIII. 

MARRYING. 

After overcoming all the difficulties and obstruc- 
tions in the way of success in life as I have tried 
to point them out in former papers, and getting 
ever so well under way in the process of thrift and 
reasonable accumulation, there is an institution 
that every young man very naturally, and very 
properly comes in contact with, that, in these days, 
is liable to counteract it all, and bring him to a 
miserable failure at last; and that is — a woman. 
Liable I say. It is not necessarily so. That is 
not an inherent quality of woman kind. It is an ac- 



102 LECTURES TO YOXJNO MEN. 

quired accomplishment, a cultivated facultj^, a fash- 
ionable piece of the education of young women, to 
indulge in habits of life that extinguish all hope of 
the average husband ever amounting to any certain 
sum. But women are not all so. And so this 
matter of marrying — the choice of a woman to 
marry — is a vital one to the thrifty young man. To 
the other sort it makes no difference — only to the 
woman. 

In the first place, I think there is a fundamental 
principle in the ethics of courtship that should 
always be borne in mind by every young man and 
young woman. Every reputable young man and 
woman has, or ought to have, a conception of the 
character and qualities that can fill their ideal of a 
companion for life. In their sober senses they 
know what quality of a person they would be will* 
ing to marry. Now the rule that I would urge 
upon young people is that they never should form 
any very intimate associations with one of the 
opposite sex whom, in the first place, they would 
not deem suitable for them to marry. Ill-assorted 
flirting is very apt to culminate in ill-assorted 
marriages. Love is a mysterious quality of human 
nature. It is governed by no laws. It comes 
unbidden, and is uncontrollable by its victim. We 
can see this often in the conduct of young people 
— in the ill-assorted matches, in the elopements 
and in the general control that it holds over its 
subject. It is said to laugh at locksmiths. Yea, 



MARRYING. 103 

and it laughs at common sense and judgment and 
prudence. It overpowers them all. Too often we 
see reputable young women marry drunkards, or 
those on the road that way, or debauchees, or in 
other respects disreputable; and we see worthy 
young men ruined by marrying women unworthy 
of them. And all this is, I think, in consequence 
of improper associations — unsuitable social inter- 
course as it respects the selection of intimates — 
improper flirting. These are the fields where love 
is propagated and cultivated. Here is, in fact, the 
place where companions for life are chosen. Here, 
and only here, is where the misery of a lifetime 
can be prevented by preventing improper marriages. 
Let your love be cultivated in a suitable direction 
and all will be well. 

Then as to choice. In the first place, I think that 
women, whatever their circumstances in life, should 
be of some practical use in the world ; and any 
young man who expects to be of any practical uso 
in the world, should be very careful to not marry 
a girl who will not be thac. 

There is certain work that, in the order of Provi- 
dence, seems to be allotted for women to do, work 
that all women can do, work that God never made 
a woman too good to do — the ordinary work of 
the house. But in these days the question seems 
to be whether this work is to be done by men or 
women, if done at all. For it is the prevailing 
passion with womankind to not do anything in that 



104 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

line. Young women, rich and poor, are educating 
themselves, and being educated by their hard- 
working mothers, to the idea that kitchen work is 
disreputable, that it is creditable to them to not 
engage in anj^thing so vulgar, and that it is particu- 
larly meritorious in them to not know how to do it. 

We can see multitudes of girls in any city or 
village — and the malady is extending to the rural 
districts, more or less — girls of all precuniary 
grades, from abject poverty to wealth, who seem 
to think that an indispensable element, if not the 
chiefest good, in the make-up of a young woman, is 
to exhibit tiny fingers, baby knuckles, dainty finger 
nails, and generally to be uncontaminated by any 
vulgar work. Of course they cannot think of put- 
ting their hands into dish water, or to a broom, or 
scrubbing brush, or any other implements of the 
house. If inexorable necessity compels them to 
any work, it must be something genteel, and not 
vulgar and unfashionable, like the indispensable 
work of the home. 

I know many young women — Oh, too many of 
them, and I think they can be found anywhere — 
whose mothers are working their lives out, or 
whose fathers are keeping themselves impoverished 
by hiring other women to wait on them, but who 
ought to be doing the work for some neighbors who 
really need help. I have seen families consisting 
of three or four bouncing women, and two or three 
others, all of whom would be in the most pitiable 



MARRYING. 105 

distress on any occasion of the hired girl's leaving 
them for a few days ; and such a commotion as the 
house would be in if she should leave for good, so 
that another must be hunted up ! Yes the distress 
is pitiable, and the helplessness, the uselessness and 
the insipidness of a large proportion of American 
women is the more pitiable. The fathers and the 
husbands of that class of women are to be pitied. 
They should be specially avoided by young men 
who have any aspiration for advancement. And 
I notice that many prudent young men do avoid 
marrying altogether, because they cannot afford 
the expense of a wife, when it ought not to cost a 
man much more with a wife and a baby or two, 
than it usually costs him alone. 

And this false education of women is the cause 
of all the trouble in the hired girl problem, which! 
is everywhere the great difficulty of housekeeping. 
So many girls who ought to be trained to the 
necessary duties of the household are indulged in 
idleness; and when they marry their husbands, re- 
spectively, have to marry another woman or two 
to take care of them ; that an inordinate demand 
for hired girls is created, and the supply is to be 
made up of the poorest material; for any young 
woman really fit to do the work and have the care 
of a house, very soon learns that that kind of work 
is too degrading for her, according to the prevail- 
ing public sentiment. Take any town of five thou- 
sand inhabitants, and probably there are not less 



106 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

than from 100 to 200 families depending on hired 
girls, where they ought to be dispensed with and the 
work done by their wives or the daughters, as the 
case may be ; which increases the demand and 
diminishes the suppty so that it is becoming more 
and more difficult for those who necessarily must 
have help, to obtain anything worthy of the name, 
for love or money. 

But there are young women, even now, who are 
not useless, whose mothers do not think that a 
woman is any the better for being insipid and use- 
less, whose fathers do not have to hire a woman to 
wait on them, and whose husbands will not have to 
marry a second woman to take care of them. I 
have seen such. I have raised some of them. A 
few of them are to be found in every community. 
^Some of them are ricli — some not rich. But they 
are not very plenty. 

And that's the kind of girls for men of sense to 
marry. Let the fools marry the other kind. 

In this connection, one thing more. In all this 
repudiation of women's work by women, the inex- 
orable sentence : " In the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread,' 7 is recognized by women as apply- 
ing somewhat to them. They admit the fact that 
they cannot all be maintained in idleness. They 
must do something. And so the clamor goes up 
for something for women to do. 

Now, while, as Anna Dickinson demonstrated in 
one of her lectures, that there is nothing to hinder 



MARRYING. 10? 

any woman, who is competent, from engaging in 
any occupation whatever, if all women who cannot 
succeed in any pursuit commonly reckoned as em- 
ployments for men, would rise up to the real dignity 
of their station, and do the work that God and 
nature have provided for them to do, and fitted 
them for in every conceivable case of a common sense 
healthy woman, there would be no complaint for want 
of something for women to do ; there would be no 
genteel lady paupers ; the hired girl problem would 
be solved ; there would be a good deal less of bank- 
ruptcy ; and the world would be much the better 
for it. 

I do not mean to say that every able-bodied 
woman should do her own housework continuously, 
or drudge constantly at any other hard work ; but 
I do say this : that any woman, rich or poor, who 
sets her face against all that, looks upon it as de- 
grading to a lady, spends her time in adorning her 
person and taking care of her pretty hands, never, 
unless under the most imperative necessity, doing 
anything useful to the world or to anybody in it, 
or if compelled by necessity to engage in something 
useful, then looking with scorn upon the natural 
and indispensable work for women ; I say such a 
woman is not fit for any man who has a soul in him, 
and expects ever to be anything, to marry. And 
more : I say that women are just as able and it is 
just as incumbent on them to take a reasonable 
share of the work of the world, and it is just as 



108 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

necessary to their health to do so, as men. Of 
late years a new invention in hygiene has been 
made, called calisthenics, or the science of keeping 
women from dying of laziness. And I say that the 
best of all calisthenics are the washboard, the 
scrubbing brush, the broom, the dishcloth, etc. 
They are much better than to go to an institution 
and hire somebody to manipulate the limbs and 
muscles of a lady dying for want of the necessary 
exercise. And I say, further, that any young man, 
poor or in moderate circumstances, who is laboring 
and struggling to make his way in the world, has 
no business to marry a woman who will not, ordi- 
narily, do the work of his house unless she brings 
a fortune of money to him. 

After all, a good deal of such female inefficiency 
is the result of misapprehension. A good many 
women avoid work, not because of laziness, not be- 
cause they do not want to do it, but because they 
think it is disreputable. They hear somebody with 
whom they associate, and in whom they confide, 
speak disparagingly of housework ; they imbibe 
the same spirit, and propagate the odium of honest 
work. Then it amounts to just this : they reject 
work because it is disreputable, and it is disreputa- 
ble — so far as at all — because they reject it. 

This is all wrong. It is taking things wrong end 
foremost. 1 never have known a woman, in all 
other respects worthy, slighted in any really de- 
sirable society because of doing work for her family. 



MARRYING, 109 

The really rich, and sensible, and high-toned, usually 
approve it. They have generally graduated in that 
school, and do not go back on their alma mater. 
The teachers in this phase of woman's education 
are generally those who ought to be practicing the 
other way — pretenders — fictitious aristocracy. 

If all women who really ought to do so — I mean 
those who cannot afford to do otherwise — would 
at once discharge their kitchen girls, and do their 
own work, we would hear no more of the odium of 
kitchen work, and then the most industrious young 
ladies would be the most popular in high society 
or low. 

In the second place, ordinarily, a poor young 
man cannot afford to marry a rich girl. Usually 
it will require a rich man to keep a rich wife sup- 
plied with the necessaries of life ; i. e., what she 
will deem necessary to maintain her dignity and 
standing ; for a rich girl, brought up rich, taught 
that she is rich, in most cases will demand a good 
deal more in the way of unnecessary expenses than 
the riches that she will bring will afford, unless 
she is uncommonly gifted in the way of sense. 
She will need a rich man to keep up her supplies. 
The usual process is about thus : A young woman 
has a comfortably rich father. He has several 
children. They are brought up with all the indul- 
gences that are common with rich fashionable peo- 
ple. His daughter marries, but he is not quite 
ready to die and divide out his wealth among his 



110 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

children ; and if he were, there would not be quite 
enough ot it to make each and every one of them 
as rich as he was ; they cannot begin on that where 
he left off, for the reason that any sum of money 
divided into half a dozen shares will not be as 
much to each share as the original, sum. So that 
as to the common run of rich young ladies, they do 
not expect to come down any in the scale of ex- 
penses and general indulgence, and poor young 
men have no business with them. They cannot 
afford the luxury of rich wives. 

I have seen a good deal of this. And I have seen 
a good deal of aping rich wives on very small 
capital. An old acquaintance of mine who started 
out in life cotemporary with me, married a wife 
who thought she was rich. She had a thousand 
dollars or so. He was poor. She thought she 
must live in the style of the rich and put on all the 
airs. She did all that. He was a fair business 
man, and for a time carried on a reasonably suc- 
cessful business ; but his profits were moderate, 
and insufficient to keep up his wife's necessary 
expenses for a rich lady ; and he dragged along, 
under embarrassment and hard tugging to keep his 
head above water for a few years, but finally he 
was compelled to go under, and he never has been 
able to rise since. And since then I have heard of 
that exquisite lady going out washing and nurs- 
ing, and anything she could get to do, and to-day 
her husband perambulates the country as a book 



MARRYING. Ill 

agent, or collecting bills for a newspaper, or any 
other little matters that he can get to do. He might 
have been comfortably rich had it not been for his 
rich wife. This is one of numerous cases that I 
have seen of that character. And it matters little 
how much wealth that kind of a woman brings with 
her. There are but few cases where it is not a 
great damage to the husband, and ruinous unless 
his own income be large. 

And then, in these days, it is extremely hazard- 
ous for a poor young man, who is good for anything, 
to marry a poor girl. The prevailing fashion now 
is for poor girls — even some of those who have 
been inured to honest useful industry — if they 
happen to marry a thrifty, prosperous young man, 
to quit business, sit down, put on airs, look down 
with scorn from their lofty pedestal upon honest 
industry, and commence a raid upon the husband's 
material financial substance. I have seen a good 
deal of this. Let one instance suffice. A very 
poor young lady, notoriously poor, but by good 
and honest industry had managed in different ways 
to keep up a respectable appearance, and maintain 
a respectable standing among her acquaintances, 
married a young man in receipt of a respectable 
salary. A house was rented, and after suitable 
preparations were made for housekeeping, she 
wanted a housekeeper; not a mere hired girl, but a 
housekeeper, who would run the whole machine, 
for she could not, oh no she could not think of 



112 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

looking into the kitchen. That would be too 
vulgar. And besides, she was to have so much 
else to do — to be a bride — to receive her bridal 
calls — to make her calls — it would be too much for 
her to do to look into the kitchen besides all that. 
But I learn that her husband is about as big a fool 
as his wife is ; they are well matched ; neither is 
cheated much ; they can punish along through life 
in poverty together as well as in any other way 
perhaps. I have seen a good many of this kind of 
people and I never saw one that amounted to any 
certain sum. 

Who, then, can a young man safely marry ? I 
have said that a woman is not necessarily fatal to 
a man's hopes of success in life. There are women 
that men can afford to marry. Don't marry for 
riches. Don't marry for poverty. Don't marry a 
woman because she works, merely. Don't marry 
for any of the collaterals of a particular woman. 
But marry a woman for true womanhood, for 
brains, heart, soul, and common sense. Find such 
a woman as that, and then if she has wealth it will 
not hart her ; if she is poor her poverty will not 
hurt her ; if she knows how to work that will not 
hurt her ; if she does not know how to work that 
will not spoil her. Such a woman as that will al- 
ways be a woman, and not a fool, under any cir- 
cumstances. I have seen a good many of them. 
Such a woman can conform to any circumstances 
of life and be an aid and comfort to her husband. 



MARRYING. 113 

She will. Look for that kind of a woman ; make 
love to her ; and marry her if you can, if you want 
to marry. Then as to 

THE WEDDING. 

A Vanderbilt may make a wedding to cost a half 
million or so if he will ; it is really nobody's 
business but his own. But with all the multitudin- 
ous and meritorious benefactions — religious, edu- 
cational, reformatory, charitable — on every hand, 
to invest money in, Mr. Yanderbilt and all other 
millionaires and other rich, and moderately rich, 
and well-to-do people, can make better use of their 
money than to inflict upon the entire household 
the fatigue and strain of two or three months, 
more or less, of a campaign for a big wedding. 
For it is really a hardship to all connected with it. 
They endure it as a necessary evil, and do not enjoy 
it, even though they succeed in having it said that 
the magnificence and expense of the trousseau ex 
ceeded anything before known in their particular 
set, or in their locality. And all engaged in such 
a siege, bride and groom not excepted, are ready 
to say, as the good woman said who sent her little 
child to invite a neighbor to a party, and in her in- 
structions to the child added, parenthetically, u and 
I wish to the Lord it was over with ;" the little 
one, in his innocence and truthfulness, delivered 
the message: "Mother wants you to come to our 
party to-morrow, and she wishes to the Lord it was 
over with." And after the great event is. past, 



114 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

they can the more truly say they thank the Lord 
that it is over with. 

And so I think it is with most of the guests of 
these great matrimonial demonstrations. There is 
no pleasure in them. They attend "because they 
must. It would be rude to decline without inexor- 
able reason, and so they enjoyed it as the man 
enjoyed bad health. Excepting, nevertheless, and 
always reserving one class of people — the snobs — 
those who happen, somehow, to get noticed by 
people that they deem of a higher grade than 
themselves. They take a good deal of solid com- 
fort in going to a wedding or other party above 
their own sphere. For example : Not very long 
ago a very worthy lady that I know of, with her 
own full share of vanity in her, with inordinate 
aspirations for recognition among the "first fami- 
lies" — in short, a snob, somehow got invited to a 
high-toned party. She went of course. Her suc- 
cess in life depended on her going to that party. 
She was rising in the world She had been noticed 
away up in the highest grade of mortals in Podunk. 
Oh, that was delicious. She went. The highest 
grade of people in Podunk amuse themselves, at 
their grandest parties, by playing poker — whatever 
that is. She found poker to be the prevailing 
luxury of the evening. And she could not play 
poker. And she was in distress. She was pro- 
moted away up high, and she didn't know how to 
play poker. She expected to be invited to that 



MARRYING. 115 

kind of parties all winter and she must learn to 
play poker. Who could teach her to play poker ? 
She must learn. She must. 

This kind of people enjoy extravagant weddings. 
Their amusement, and pandering to their vanity is 
what such parties are good for. 

And then when we come to poor people, and 
those in moderate and straitened circumstances, 
these wedding splurges are positively wrong — 
wrong to the parties themselves, wrong to friends, 
and sometimes wrong to creditors ; wrong in the 
large expenditures that cannot be afforded. I have 
seen a good many large and expensive weddings 
where that mone}^ ought to have been invested in 
paying debts ; and other cases where it was needed 
to start the newly made family in the way of house- 
keeping or in business. 

I know a man badly involved in debt, always on 
a strain to keep the sheriff at bay, who not long 
ago was deeply distressed because he could not 
find two hundred dollars to borrow to make a 
wedding for his daughter! We may say that 
Vanderbilt was a fool to waste half a million on a 
wedding, when he could have invested it in other 
ways for the permanent benefit of humanity, so as 
to afford himself and his family a life-long income 
of pleasure, but this man was, perhaps, a bigger 
fool on a smaller scale, to want to plunge himself 
deeper into debt and distress by wasting two hun- 
dred dollars of somebody else's money on a wed- 
ding. 



116 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

And I have practiced what I am preaching, so 
that I know it is successful. I have been married 
twice,- and in each case it cost me a moderate fee 
to the minister, and the family about half a day's 
extra work. And that is all. And I was just as 
well married, and as well thought of, as if the 
whole neighborhood had been in a ferment over it 
for a month, and money had been expended that 
we needed then, if ever. And I kept about my 
business as if nothing unusual had happened. 

Young man and young woman, about to marry, 
if parents or other friends want to force upon you 
the worry and discomfort of a big wedding, be- 
cause other folks do, don't }^ou do it. Emancipate 
yourselves from that folly of fashion. As you are 
entering upon that holy state it is a good time to 
eschew all fashionable follies and vices. You have 
the same right to the ordinary comfort and quie- 
tude of life on the eve of marriage as at any other 
time. Marriage is not a crime, or in any way dis- 
reputable, that you should be punished for it by the 
trouble and worry and strain of a long, elaborate 
preparation for a fashionable splurge for the bene- 
fit of all the snobs in the neighborhood. 

Another of the abominations of fashionable wed- 
dings is the present current custom of presents. — 
Not to say that the parents or other intimate 
friends of the newly married should not, on that 
occasion, if they desire, make any contributions 
whatever to them, purely as gifts ; but in the pre- 
vailing fashion of big weddings, every guest being 



MARRYING. 117 

expected to contribute something in the way of a 
so-called present, it is all simply a matter of traffic. 
People are invited for the sake of the presents 
they are to bring. They go and take the presents 
because they expect them to be reciprocated some 
time. The recipients are under obligations to con- 
tribute to all the weddings that come along. It is 
a sort of traffic that people in moderate circum- 
stances cannot affoid. Their presents are likely to 
be what they do not want, or cannot afford to have, 
and there is really no friendship or gift about it. 
To rich people it is simply a bore. 

But all this is not to say that marriage should 
not be celebrated with a comfortable, quiet, social 
party of particular friends — half a dozen or so. 
And in this matter of invitations, remember that it 
is your business to choose your own company, and 
nobody has any right to an invitation. Be your 
wedding large or small, do not invite any for the 
reason that they will be offended if not invited. 
None but fools will take offense on that account. 
It is your business. I have been omitted from a 
good many large and small weddings in my day, 
and I never thought that I was insulted, slighted 
or injured by it, or that it was any reflection upon 
me, or any of my business. I may be dull of 
apprehension, but I never have thought that I had 
any claim upon any body's hospitality or their 
social recognition. 

And then> my young friends, when the marrying 



118 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN, 

is over, I think the most sensible and comfortable 
and satisfactory thing to do is to quietly go about 
your business, just as if nothing had happened. 
For I never could see why a newly married pair 
should be, just then, subjected to the fatigue and 
discomfort of what is called a wedding tour. If 
you have occasion to travel, professionally or for 
instruction, and it happens to be convenient to do 
so just then, that is all very well; but to take a 
long, tiresome and expensive journey merely as a 
part of the programme of a wedding splurge, it is 
nonsense. It is starting out in married life at a 
disadvantage. The honeymoon should be as sweet 
as possible, and not embittered by unnecessary 
tribulations to disgust the parties with the new 
relation and to create a repulsion to each other. 
There is no need of losing your senses for a 
month or two before and after marriage. 



XIV. 

AFTER MARRIAGE — WOMEN'S WORK. 

In my last number, having discussed the matter 
of women's work, in a general way, as a caution to 
thrifty young men before marriage, I propose, now, 
to enter upon that subject more elaborately, for the 
consideration of young people after marriage, as 
they enter upon the realities of married life. There 
is a good deal of agitation now-a-days, about in- 
venting something for women to do, or setting 



AFTER MARRIAGE — WOMEN 's WORK. 119 

apart something for women to do, or somehow to 
provide work for them to do to earn their living. 

Now, I think, that with the exception of a very 
small fraction of woman-kind — a few sensible and 
enterprising women — there is a good deal more 
trouble in getting women to do something in the 
way of any useful work than in finding something 
for them to do. At all events there always is work 
enough for all the women to do. In all our cities 
and villages the prevailing sentiment and study, 
and fashion and practice, are that any woman that 
aspires to be anybody must not do any useful la- 
bor. The nice young lady alluded to in my last 
number, who could not think of looking into the 
kitchen because she had married a man able to 
support two women, is not an isolated case. So 
much silliness does not alwa}^scrop out, but pretty 
nearly all the brainless women of the day seem to 
think that the ne plus ultra of feminine accom- 
plishment is to not know how to do anything that 
is of any value in the world, and that there is noth- 
ing much more derogatory to a woman than to be 
guilty of work. And so prevalent is this theory 
becoming that a good many women who have bet- 
ter sense than that, and too many men, also, are 
falling in with the idea as a necessary surrender to 
public opinion. The other day an otherwise sensi- 
ble and a really estimable lady of my acquaintance, 
in speaking of an enterprising young lady who is 
working for wages, said, "well, girls that work are 



120 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

not much thought of." This was said, not only to 
relate a fact in society, but said with an air of ap- 
proval. I think, however, that this sentiment is 
propagated much more by fashionable poor people 
— those whose highest ambition is to ape the rich 
than by the really rich who can afford it. 

The great want of the age, in respect to the woman 
question, is to get the women willing to do some- 
thing. And here is a field for all the women's 
rights lecturers in the land. 

Any women who really want to do something 
have not far to go. There is an abundance of 
work for all our native-born American young 
women to do, in the vocations that our mothers, 
and grandmothers, and all the high-toned women 
of a century ago engaged in — the various duties of 
the household that God designed for women's 
share in the work that He made necessary to the 
perpetuity and the civilization of the race, and 
which is now supposed must be done by an import- 
ed population. 

Not that no women should do anything else but 

this ; let any woman do whatever she wishes to and 

will fit herself for ; but the idea should be cultivated 

and kept prominent in all phases of our civilization, 

that the great primary sphere of woman is woman's 

work in the home. Apropos to this I cannot do 

better than to repeat a passage from my No. XI o 

"When God in His infinite wisdom made it necessary 
to the life and well being of our race that all these 
varieties of work should be done, He also made our 



AFTER MARRIAGE — WOMEN'S WORK. 121 



physical nature to correspond with that necessity, so 
that every man and every woman would be the better 
for doing some of it. And He did not make it deroga- 
tory to any man or woman to have a hand in it. 
When He made the necessity that the ground should 
be tilled, that the mines should be worked, that build- 
ings should be built, that the thousand other trades 
should be carried on, that food should be cooked, rai- 
ment should be cleansed, dishes washed, and the hun- 
dred other things appertaining to the habitation be 
done, He did not make it disreputable for any man, 
woman, or child to take a reasonable and suitable share 
in any of such work, and any public sentiment that 
seeks to degrade such service is false in philosophy, 
false to humanity, false to God." 

A celebrated Hygienic physician, writing of the 

effects of the different occupations on health, puts 

idleness down as the most unhealthful of all. He 



u Idlers generally have very poor health. Of all 
hygienic misfortunes, that of having no employment 
is the worst. A poor man is to be pitied, but an idler 
much more. The most inveterate cases of hypochon- 
driasis among men, the most intractable cases of hys- 
teria among women, and the worst forms of dyspepsia 
among both sexes, are to be found among those who 
have no regular employment. Every one who desires 
health should keep himself regularly engaged at some- 
thing which will call forth and exercise both his 
men tal and corporeal powers. If he must go to either 
extreme, it is better it should be that of doing too 
much." 

The above needs only to be stated to be appre- 
ciated. Everybody knows it to be all true. It is 
verified all about us, especially in the fashionable 
ailments of the idle young women everywhere ; for 
idleness in just as unhealthful upon women, as men. 

Not many years ago I met with a newly married 
couple. The young man was a sprightly business 



122 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN, 

man, in receipt of a very good salary, but in his 
years of bachelorhood, he never had thought of 
saving up any of his large income. The wife had 
exactly the same amount of poverty, so that they 
started out quite evenly, only that he did the work 
and she put on the airs — and they were something 
immense. She is of the kind that cannot think of 
making herself of any use in creation. In a board- 
ing house, listless, insipid, doitfg nothing to fulfill 
the physiological conditions of reasonable health, 
of course she became a fashionable invalid, proud 
of her delicacy. Calisthenic processes and drug 
medication have been unavailing; the boarding 
house has been abandoned as too common place ; 
they are housekeepers, with a lusty Irish girl for 
the second woman. She is dying for the want of 
washboard, broom, dish cloth and cooking stove ; 
he will soon be a widower. 

He is the willing slave to all her follies and 
foibles, and of course he is always on a strain, and 
more or less in debt, to keep along with this pro- 
gramme of life ; whereas with reasonable industry 
on her part, suited to their circumstances, and 
reasonable economy, she might have been a healthy 
woman, one-half or so of the income would have 
been saved, and they well on the road to indepen- 
dence, instead of in the slough of failure. 

Women are just as able to do reasonable work, 
according to their strength, as men. The natural 
and legitimate duties of women in the order of civil- 



AFTER MARRIAGE — WOMEN'S WORK. 123 

ized society are as necessary as those of the men ; 
and there is no more reason why the female part of 
a matrimonial partnership should be exempt from 
her share in the labor of life than that the other 
side should. And yet if a hard-working young 
man marries, the chances are that he must do his 
own work and his wife's also — i. e. hire a woman to 
do it, while with laziness and fashion the wife 
dwindles away by inches, for the want of some- 
thing to do. 

In a sermon to young people that I heard not 
long ago the minister truly said that young mar- 
ried men do not dare to venture upon making 
homes of their own, but must live in boarding 
houses, because unable to make such homes as are 
acceptable to their wives. He did not say that to 
make a home a young man must marry a pair of 
women — one for a wife, and another to wait on her; 
but that is really what is the matter. 

Some years ago I was teaching a young business 
man how to keep his books. After I had learned 
all about his business, his expenses, etc., he asked 
me if I thought he could get through with his 
undertaking successfully. He and his wife were 
living at a boarding house. I replied that it all de- 
pended on his rate of expenses, and advised him to 
get a little cozy place and begin housekeeping, to 
save expense. Well, he afterwards did go to house- 
keeping, but that at least doubled his expenses, as 
his wife proved to be helpless, and he had another 



124 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

woman to provide for, with all that that implies, 
and nobody has ever yet found out how much 
money a second woman in the house does imply. 
His business was good, though only moderate, 
affording a reasonable, but not a large amount of 
profits. He met with no considerable losses, and 
had no particular bad luck. He struggled and bat- 
tled along, year after year, vainly trying to over- 
come the inexorable leak and waste of hired girlism, 
and the constant expenses of fashionable lady idle- 
ness, which, with the necessary family expenses, 
constantly consumed more than his profits ; his 
burdens and embarrassments pressing harder and 
harder, until, in seven or eight years he found relief 
in bankruptcy. 

Now this man's wife was just as able to do her 
own house work as her husband was to do his 
work. And the saving of this hired girl fund 
would have saved him and ensured him a perman- 
ent prosperity in his business. Let us see : The 
full and exact cost of the common run of a hired 
girl — such as are usually to be had — is beyond hu- 
man ken. It is past finding out. But the very 
lowest rate that it can be reckoned at; say wages, 
board, waste, and the etceteras, is not less than a 
dollar every day. And where the mistress is not 
especially vigilant and watchful, it is sure to be a 
good deal more. 

In my friend's case, then, one dollar a day for 
eight years, with interest at ? per cent, from the 



AFTER MARRIAGE — WOMEN'S WORK. 125 

end of each year to the end of eight years, amounts 
to $3,744.82. To my certain knowledge this would 
have saved him. I mention this case thus particu- 
larly as a sample of multitudes of other cases that 
I have seen and that everybody can see all 
along the way. We can see them all about us un- 
der way all the time ; whether business men, to 
come to a crash by-and-by, or salaried men to be 
merely kept poor all the time, it makes no differ- 
ence ; this useless hired girlism is ruin to thous- 
ands who otherwise might be comfortably inde- 
pendent. To see how this is, let us look further 
along in this figure-work : 

A dollar a day for ten years, with interest as 

above, amounts to $5,042.80 

In twenty years, 14,962.80 

In thirty years, 34,476.90 

These figures are an interesting, and may be a 
profitable, study for young wives and their hus- 
bands. 

But the foregoing class of cases is not universal. 
I have seen all along through life, some cases of 
the other kind. And we may see them even now, 
in any community — high-toned, respectable women 
who do not think it disreputable, and are not too 
lazy, to do reasonable work in aid of their hus- 
bands ; and they prosper of course. And this 
proves my theory that American women kind can 
if they will, and we are not necessarily dependent 
on an imported race of women to keep our houses 
for us. 



126 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

I may add, here, for the benefit of older people, 
that chronic hired girlism can be reformed. I 
know it is about as difficult as to reform from 
whisky or tobacco, but it can be done. I have 
seen it. 

A newly married pair began housekeeping about 
the time that I did ; both poor ; the wife had been 
a hired girl herself. But now she had a man to 
work for her, and with no idea that she was to be 
anything to him but a toy or a doll baby, "what's 
the use," she said, " of my working, when my hus- 
band can earn money enough in a day to pay a girl 
for me a week." They dragged along for many 
years in poverty ; she having no aspirations for 
anything but ease and present enjoyment of what- 
ever of this world's comforts by hook or crook 
came to them, until, finally, her husband became a 
hopeless inefficient drunkard ; then she roused up 
her own latent energies, found out that she was 
good for something besides to consume what a 
husband earns, went to work, economized and ac- 
cumulated a respectable property on her own ac- 
count. 

And so there are many wives who have begun on 
the down hillside of this hired girlism, and are thus 
pulling their husbands down, who can yet reform 
if they will, and save the partnership from ruin. 

In conclusion, I want it to be distinctly under- 
stood that I am not finding any fault with anybody ; 
that I do not say that any woman in particular 



AFTER MARRIAGE — WOMEN'S WORK. 127 

ought to do any useful work — that is none of my 
business ; I am not anybody's monitor. I am only 
giving the philosophy of this disease of hired 
girlism — showing the facts and the law, not making 
them, or applying them to anybody in particular; 
pointing out the consequences of one course and 
the other, as it respects people of moderate income ; 
on the one hand bankruptcy and life long poverty ; 
on the other success, comfort, and independence. 
We might wish that our Heavenly Father had seen 
fit to so arrange things for us that the present 
fashions of the better half of humanity would not 
be ruinous to themselves, their husbands and their 
families : *that they could be healthy, vigorous, 
lithe and handsome in insipid idleness, instead of 
the contrary of all that, and their husbands able to 
spend their money and save it, and grow rich on in- 
vestments in hired girls. But that is not the law, 
and we cannot make it so. 

I know there are some men with incomes so 
large that the cost of a hired girl, or two or three 
of them, cannot overpower them ; but with all 
young men with ordinary incomes ifc is a question 
of success or failure in life. It is impossible for 
them to support a hired girl and rise above 
poverty, with the chances of absolute destitution 
and distress always against them. It is for you. to 
choose, young wife and young husband. Sit down 
together and look this matter square in the face, 
and work out the problem for yourselves. As you 



128 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

start out in life with the laudable ambition, as I 
must presume, to fill a position of usefulness and 
honor, to attain to a standing of creditable promi- 
nence in the body politic, and not to be blank in 
creation, or excrescences upon society, you see be- 
fore you two open ways ; and it is for you to de- 
termine which of them will be most conducive to 
what you wish to be ; it is for you to decide which 
will be most conducive to your life-long comfort 
and satisfaction. 

In direct connection with the subject of this 
chapter, is that of women's education ; which is, of 
course, addressed to mothers and fathers of girls 
rather than to young men and women after marriage. 

I do not propose to go into an elaborate disser- 
tation upon the education of women. Let your 
girls learn anything and everything that they wish 
to and that you can afford, provided that the one 
essential, aye indispensable, accomplishment of the 
true woman be not omitted ; i. e. practical knowl- 
edge of all the actual work of the home. Without 
this no woman, rich or poor, is fit to place herself 
at the head of her husband's house ; in fact not fit 
to be a wife. For, whether necessary or not to do 
the work of her house, a woman who does not 
know from experience what it is to do it, is always 
at a disadvantage, always imposed upon by her 
help, and the house is usually in a state of discom- 
fort. And a young woman who undertakes to do 
her work, without that previous education, will 



AFTER MARRIAGE — WOMEN'S WORK. 129 

then find it hard to learn, and mnch more difficult 
and much harder to do, than if she had learned the 
art in her girlhood days. 

I have seen women who, in their school days, had 
been educated in all the literary branches and gen- 
teel accomplishments of the schools , whose parents 
thought such to be all that was necessary in the 
make-up of a woman for life, undertake to be 
working housekeepers for their husbands ; and al- 
though, where the will is good, such women can 
learn the trade after a fashion. I never have known 
one of them to be really good housekeepers. 

I have seen a household where the mother has 
toiled, year after year, in the labors of the home, 
whereby the family grew rich. Daughters grow up 
in that home. The mother says : " Now, my girls 
shall not work as I have done. There is no need 
of it. We will send them to school and give them 
an education, with all the advantages of society and 
fashion that I was deprived of in my young days. 
That will surely carry them through." 

And so they are sent to a fashionable boarding 
school, or college, where all the good and solid 
branches of book knowledge are learned, and of 
course not omitting the follies and foibles of fashion, 
whether in the curriculum or not. All that is to 
carry them through. There is no thought of the 
education of the kitchen. That is too vulgar. It 
is well enough for the mother, She was not 
educated in the higher branches ; and she 
9 



130 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

works her life out, or harasses it out with hired 
help to raise the girls in genteel uselessness. This 
is a sample of the current fashion of training girls, 
not only by the rich, but those ill very moderate 
circumstances, and quite poor, keep themselves 
impoyerished and on a strain to give their daugh- 
ters the benefit of that kind of culture. 

It is all wrong. The primary duty of a mother, 
in respect to the education of her girl is to drill 
her in the practical duties of the home. It is not 
a favor to her to allow her to shirk that indispens- 
able element in the make-up of the true woman. 
Not to say that she shall not go to ever so many 
schools and learn all other accomplishments, but 
not let all that supersede or extinguish the primary 
education of woman for woman's work. 

A daughter of mine was brought up by a step- 
mother. She was trained to all the mysteries of 
woman's work in the home. She thought it was 
pretty hard, when she saw so many of her associates 
who were not required to do anything of the kind, 
gome other people thought that was the step- 
mother of it. An own daughter of the same step- 
mother was afterwards trained in exactly the same 
way. They are now good for something besides 
being doll babies and spending the earnings of 
their husbands. And they and their husbands 
thank that mother for such an education. 

I have seen a good many girls brought up in that 
way, and they are always the better for it. But the 



AFTER MARRIAGE— WOMEN'S WORK. 131 

great preponderance is the other way, to the serious 
damage of thousands of families. 

I think this great necessity of women's knowl- 
edge of women's home duties is generally acknowl- 
edged. And accordingly we read of various 
schemes for effecting the object by the schools — in 
some other way than by apprenticeship in the ac- 
tual work itself. It cannot be done. I never could 
have learned to hammer out a horse shoe and shoe 
a horse by reading all the books that the learned 
blacksmith could write in a lifetime. And the only 
possible way for a girl to learn the art of house- 
keeping is by practicing it with her mother or some 
other good housekeeper in the home. 

And this false education of girls is a serious 
public calamity. It robs society of nearly all 
efficient hired help in women's work. It takes from 
this highly responsible and highly honorable de- 
partment of the work of civilization, nearly all the 
efficiency and competent brains of womankind, and 
leaves that work chiefly to incompetent hands. The 
inefficiency of the hired girls that are to be had 
was tersely expressed by a lady friend of mine — 
in poor health, really needing help, and doing her 
own work, in this wise : " I am not well, and 
not able to wait on a hired girl." Any good 
housekeeper necessarily afflicted with an or- 
dinary hired girl will appreciate the appositeness 
of the remark. 



132 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

XV. 

AFTER MARRIAGE — STYLE. 

Hired-girlism is not the worst thing that can be- 
fall a household. This is often necessary — some- 
times profitable. And there are many incomes 
where the price of a hired girl, or any reasonable 
number of them is of no consequence. 

But in such cases there is a greater peril than is 
the hired girl mania to fashionable poor people. 
There are very few incomes so large that an ambi- 
tious, fashionable, stylish woman, with a husband 
to match, cannot exhaust it all and more. 

Somehow, in the make-up of the class of people, 
rich or poor, whose god is style, and show, and 
spread, there is no limit to their ambition for ex- 
pense. As the opportunities for investment in that 
direction are unlimited, so their expenditures are 
limited only by their ability to command the 
means. 

And this passion leads not only to the waste of 
all the honest money that a man can get, but often 
to much more serious consequences. 

Those of my readers who read the papers of 
thirty years ago will remember the murder of Dr. 
Parkman by Prof. Webster in Boston. That hor- 
rid murder was incited by the passion for display 
in his wife and daughters — by their spending more 
money than he could earn. The facts were these : 
Webster was a professor of chemistry in Harvard 
College, with a salary that his family ought to 



AFTER MARRIAGE — STYLE. 133 

have been satisfied to live upon. He was a slave 
to their follies, and they kept him in debt so deeply 
that he was incessantly pressed and harassed for 
money that was beyond his power to get. Dr. 
Parkman was a creditor who had long been pressing 
him for the payment of a note for five or six hun- 
dred dollars, and in his desperation the Professor 
decoyed the Doctor into his room in the College, 
under pretense of payment, and with the note on 
the table, murdered him to get possession of it ; 
and he was detected and hung. In the higher 
walks of life, with an unsullied reputation, and 
an income sufficient for all reasonable desires, Prof. 
Webster's family plunged him into a perpetual 
strain of embarrassments and distresses that for 
aught any human can know crazed his brain, that 
sacrificed the life of the man whose money they 
had wasted, and brought their own dearest friend 
to an ignominious death. 

Gilman, the forger, now languishing in prison, 
his wife in an insane asylum, his children a hundred 
times worse than orphans, committed his great 
crimes, not from any innate depravity of heart, 
not from inordinate acquisitiveness, but solely to 
gratify the passion for display, for appearances 
and show of wealth. He was respectable, highly 
esteemed, and sufficiently provided with the luxu- 
ries of life when living on his honest money. But 
that wicked passion for inordinate ostentation 
seized him and her, and by it they are where they 



134 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

are, and their children disgraced and humiliated 

for life. 

The New York Times of December 13th, 18TT, 

in giving an account of the failure of a " reputable 

law firm," composed of two church members in 

good standing, says : 

u The late book-keeper of the firm, when interro- 
gated yesterday, said that he did not think either 
partner carried off with him much of the embezzled 
funds. The trouble was, he said, that they had been 
living at an annual expense of $20,000 on an income 
of about $8,000." 

But not to occupy too much space with extreme 
cases, which might be extended almost indefinitely, 
the same spirit prevails more or less everywhere ; 
and when it does not engender actual crime it does 
effect the life long discomfort and pecuniary ruin 
of its victims. Professor Webster's family had 
the unholy ambition to compete, in the way of 
fashionable life, with somebody a great deal richer 
than they. They did it on the money of Dr. 
Parkman and others. Gilman and his wife had the 
same ambition. That is all that was the matter 
with those two families. 

To bring the matter home : there are a few rich 
people here in Corning ; not rich enough to hurt 
any body much, but rich enough to exemplify the 
subject in hand. There are also a good many well- 
to-do people here, who might become comfortably 
rich some day if they would ; with income suffi- 
cient, if a reasonable share of it were to be saved, 
to aggregate a handsome fortune in after years ; 



AFTER MARRIAGE — STYLE. 135 

but they cannot wait ; they have the fatal ambition 
of the Websters and the Gilmans ; they prefer the 
shadow of wealth now to the substance by and 
by ; and so they kill the goose that is giving them 
the golden eggs ; they spend all their money as 
fast as it is earned — usually a good while before — 
to ape their richer neighbors in style and spread. 
Young married people think they are doing a big 
thing to begin that way. They think they are 
making a large amount of social capital and popu- 
larity with the class whose social recognition they 
are courting. But they are mistaken. All their 
investment of money and of sycophancy is wasted. 
Real aristocracy despises the £ilse,and when a pair 
of young fools start out in life by investing all 
they are worth, and more, in glitter and show, they 
are sure to receive more ridicule than approbation 
from those that they do it for ; they are at once 
written down as failures. For their spreading 
themselves out so thin will not deceive any body ; 
their real circumstances are known or will be ; 
they cannot pass for rich on a little tinsel. 

So, my young friends, as yo u start out together 
for your life work, instead of spreading yourselves 
out you had better gather up ; instead of investing 
in public opinion, for dividends of social nods, in- 
vest in real estate, good interest-paying bonds, or 
a good bank account, with the real approving re- 
cognition of all really rich and sensible people ; tor 
they will soon find this out too. Instead of a large 



136 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

rented ho use , and fine carpets and furniture, and a 
set of tiny fingers and baby knuckles, attached to 
a helpless, idle, fashionable wife, and a hired girl, 
all with more or less of somebody else's money 
mixed up with it, better, far better, a little home of 
your own, if not more than a couple of rooms, with 
a rag carpet of her own make, and other comfort- 
able things to match, with a healthy, handsome, 
rosy, working wife, and money accumulating as a 
foundation for real wealth. 

There is a good deal said about the worship of 
mammon, the race after wealth, the intensity of 
labor for its accumulation, etc., etc. But I think 
that is not what's the matter. If mammon were 
worshiped a good deal more than it is, I think 
the world would be the better for it. ■ Trace all 
money crimes — embezzlements, forgeries, thefts, 
burglaries, bank robberies and defalcations of every 
phase to their source — and I think it will be found 
almost universally, that this passion for spending 
money for ostentation, and not the worship of it, 
not hoarding or accumulation of it in any way, is 
at the bottom of it. One of the gigantic evils of 
the day is the habit of a large proportion of the 
people to spend more money than they earn, and I 
do not see that it makes much difference whether 
it is gotten by outright stealing or by what is call- 
ed honest running into debt for what can be dis- 
pensed with, and never paid for. We hear about 
honest failures in business, and dishonest ones. 



AFTER MARRIAGE — STYLE. 137 

If the party gives up to his creditors all the prop- 
erty he has, it is called an honest failure ; but I 
think that depends on what he has been doing with 
his money for }^ears agone. If he has been spend* 
ing more money than he has been making, and run- 
ning into debt to make up the deficiency and keep 
afloat, so that his creditors finally have to pay for 
his and his wife's ostentation, I cannot see much 
difference between such a failure and one where the 
property is put away in any other manner. 

This is not a question of how much it will cost, 
as with the matter of tobacco, or whisky, or hired 
girls, but it is a question of all the money that one 
can get ; for with the passion for aping richer peo- 
ple — for living as other people do, as the saying is 
— the demand is limited only by the power to sup- 
ply it. 

This passion is fearfully demoralizing ; not that 
all its victims commit any crimes, but its tendency 
is that way. A young man marries. He may have 
been sufficiently economical, and saved up some- 
thing. His own tastes and aspirations may be in 
the right direction. His wife has what are called 
higher notions. Her ambition is to start out, not 
especially to suit themselves, not to suit their own 
convenience, and comfort, and circumstances, but 
for the eye of other people, under the mistaken 
notion that thereby they will command their ap- 
plause ; when the fact is that those other people, 
to whose fancy they are pandering, care nothing 



138 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

at all about them or their glitter, only as a matter 
of pity ; for they who have made themselves rich 
did not begin that way, and they know that such 
beginnings are wrong end foremost. Beginning 
where rich people end is sure to end where 
rich people began ; i. e., at the bottom. 
Well, the young husband is anxious to please his 
wife — she is all in all to him — and he invests his 
money to make a sensation. They start out under 
high pressure; — their money, perad venture, proves 
inadequate, and they go into debt. Meantime the 
institution does not prove satisfying ; somebody is 
a little ahead ; they are fairly launched on the sea 
of fashion, and they must plow it through ; so the 
debt is piled up deeper and still deeper, until the 
crash is inevitable ; then the tempter comes in and 
to postpone the evil day crime is added to folly, 
and the chapter is ended. Such are the tendencies 
of this foolish vice, and in whatever degree that 
passion obtains, it is always vitally damaging, and 
generally fatal to the prospects of its victims, 
whether culminating in crime or not. There is no 
rational reason for falling into it. 

And this foolishness of inordinate style is not 
limited to poor people. The really rich and mod- 
erately rich young people, who have gotten their 
wealth, or expect to get it, without knowing how 
it comes or what it has cost, are as subject to seri- 
ous damage by this vice as poorer people. Even 
where inherited wealth does not spoil young men 



AFTER MARRIAGE — STYLE. 139 

in other ways, it is very likely to in this. I have 
seen men begin poor and grow rich, raising famil- 
ies in the meantime — beginning with rigid economy 
and self-denial, but as their means increased, grad- 
ually and prudently increasing their expenditures,^ 
even to luxury and elegance ; all of which is cer- 
tainly to be commended. 

Then I have seen their children — all innocent of 
any wealth-producing power in themselves — com- 
mence life ; commence where — where their fathers 
did? Oh, that is not to be thought of; perhaps 
not desirable, because not necessary. Where their 
fathers leave off? No, that is too common. As 
their fathers w r ould like to have them begin? No, 
they are too old fogy. They do not know much of 
an}- thing. The younger generation is superior to 
the old, and can invent so many more spreading 
ways than they, that they really have to cut loose 
and start out on their own wisdom. And they 
launch out. 

I have seen, for example — one of many — a young 
family of two, not rich enough to hurt them at all 
if they would use common sense with it, starting 
out for a sensation, begin with an establishment 
sufficient for a family of a dozen, in grandeur ex- 
ceeding anything ever known in all their family 
connections, and aspiring to eclipse everything in 
the locality, at an outlay, perhaps, of all the avail- 
able means at their command, and involving a 
current expense tc run the institution, that cannot 



140 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

be afforded until after the father or mother of one 
or the other of the matrimonial partnership, from 
whom the expected wealth is to come, dies ; or if 
their wealth is already in hand, involving a waste 
of money, altogether, that, sooner or later, is sure 
to exhaust any moderate fortune and land them at 
the bottom. Such cases are not rare. I have seen 
them all along through life ; and I see them to- 
day. 

Happily there always have been and always will 
be some men and women of brains not afflicted 
with that sort of mania. It is a good thing that 
some people have an organ of acquisitiveness ; that 
there are some "worshipers of mammon," as they 
are sometimes sneeringly called by those who are 
eager enough for the mammon, but cannot keep it 
long enough to pay a single devotion to it. With- 
out them the world would speedily degenerate to 
barbarism. The accumulation of money or proper- 
ty is not necessarily worshiping mammon. While 
we cannot serve God and mammon, we can serve 
God and respect mammon sufficiently to save some 
of it to serve God with, and if more of the people 
would do this the world would be the better for it. 

Of course this matter of economy and accumu- 
lation is sometimes overdone. People who have 
laid the foundation of their fortunes by small sav- 
ings and rigid self-denial are wont to continue the 
same habits when able to do otherwise. But better, 
far better, so, than the other extreme through life, 



AFTER MARRIAGE — STYLE. 141 

by which no man can amount to anything. We 
sometimes think their benevolent contributions too 
meagre for their circumstances ; but how much do 
the spendthrifts who accumulate nothing, with like 
opportunities, contribute ? The fact is that all the 
benevolent enterprises of the daj r are carried on 
chiefly by the thrifty " worshipers of mammon." 

For example : take the matter of church finances. 
Brother A. has always been a man of moderate in- 
come, but by severe economy and self-denial he has 
managed to accumulate something all along through 
life, while living in a sufficiently respectable style, 
and always paying reasonably toward the support 
of his church, and other meritorious benefactions ; 
and he is comfortably well off in the way of pro- 
Y>erty. Brother B. has had about the same income 
as A., but his cigars and the kid gloves, et. cetera, 
and his wife's diamond rings, and pretty shawls, 
and hired girls, and other pleasant things that A. 
and his wife could not think of indulging in, have 
exhausted all his income all along, so that he could 
not contribute much of anything to the church or 
any other benefactions, and now he is entirely poor. 

A. is expected to pay largely to the church, and B. 
comparatiyely nothing, because the Lord has pros- 
pered A. ; when the fact is that the Lord has pros- 
pered B. just as much as A. The difference is that 

B. has used up his prosperity as he went along, for 
his own gratification, and A. has saved some of his. 
A. must pay because he can do it without self-de- 



142 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

nial, whereas years of self-denial are what has pro- 
duced his present ability ; so that his contributions 
are as much the fruits of self-denial as B.'s would 
be if he should deny himself of present indulgence. 
And I have seen many a poor church brother who 
can afford more extravagances than their prosper- 
ous brethren would think of indulging in, and 
when the church expenses are to be made up they 
are too poor to pay much of anything. Do they 
get their cigars or their fineries, for themselves and 
families, any cheaper because they are poor? 

And then there is an intermediate grade of cur- 
rent style and fashion, not ruinous, but to a con- 
siderable extent mischievous. I was told by a 
very worthy Christian lactyjthe other day, that she 
had not been at the church for two years, because 
she could not afford clothing suitable to appear 
in at the House of God! Good Christian people 
make a specialty of exhibiting their fine and expen- 
sive clothing at church. People must dress richly 
to go to church. And so people who cannot dress 
richly cannot go to church. Poor people must not go 
to church. All this is about as imperative, upon the 
feminine community, as if it were the law. It is 
the law — the law of fashion — and there is no more 
inexorable law than this. A woman must not go 
to church in a plain, cheap dress that she can buy 
for a dollar or two, not because it is not respectable 
hi appearance, but because it is not costly. 

Now, I think it is a bad law for good Christian 



AFTER MARRIAGE — STYLE. 143 

people to make that deprives people of the means 
of grace for their poverty. Unknown numbers of 
church sittings are always vacant because those 
who ought to be in them cannot dress up to the 
church-going standard. 

A respectable, well-to-do farmer, in this vicinity, 
heard the Rev. Mr. Chandler preach two funeral 
sermons outside of Corning village. He is not a 
professor of religion. He was strongly impressed 
by the discourses. He said to a member of the 
Corning M.E. Church : " If that man could preach 
at Gibson, orKnoxville, or in a school-house any- 
where convenient to me, I would like very much to 
be a regular attendant, with my family. But in 
your Corning Church the style and grade of dress 
are so far above what we can think of indulging in, 
that we would be very uncomfortable to meet with 
you there. We cannot think of such a thing." 
The force of this reasoning was appreciated and 
all that the good brother could do was to offer a 
seat in his pew, with stabling for his team, at any 
or all times, and cordially invite him to come in. 

The only possible remedy is in a change of the 
law. The ostentation of dress is not a necessary 
part of the service of the sanctuary ; nay, its abo- 
lition would promote the spiritual interests of all 
churches ; for it would be conducive to sincere 
Christian devotion to leave the god of fashion at 
home, if it were possible that such a thing should 
be. I do not say that Christian people should not 



144 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

wear upon the person all the value that they can 
afford, elsewhere than where it is essential for all 
Christians, rich and poor, to congregate. Here 3 
certainly, all should meet on one common ground, 
with no possible cause of repulsion to any. But 
"it is the pride of the poor that keeps them away." 
Certainly it is, and they have no excuse that will 
avail them at the bar of God. It is the pride of 
the rich, too, that makes the church regulation 
grade of dress. And so long as human nature is 
as it is ; so long as the sisterhood will persist in so 
many ridiculous modes of dress, to their own dis- 
comfort, and the distress of all sensible people, all 
because other folks do, and so long as the well-to- 
do sisters dare not go to church without exhibiting 
their wealth of dress, it is not to be expected that 
the poor will venture on the road to heaven with 
less than the orthodox grade of church dry goods. 



XVI. 

ON RUNNING INTO DEBT. 

It is quite common for public teachers to inveigh 
at wholesale against running into debt. " Never, 
under any circumstances," they advise everybody, 
" run into debt." If I were asked by a young man 
just starting out in life whether to take that kind 
of advice or not, I should say that depends. It 
depends on several things. It depends upon what 
the debt is to be for. A long time ago I heard an 
old experienced farmer say that he had rather owe 



ON RUNNING INTO DEBT. 145 

a hundred dollars for a good pair of oxen than ten 
dollars at a store. The idea was that he would 
have the oxen to show for the hundred dollar debt, 
and nothing to show for the store debt ; it would 
be used up before paid for. And that philosophy 
will generally hold good. And when I see a man 
with a fixed income — be it more or less — who can- 
not wait till his month's wages is earned before he 
must use it, and in debt at the stores wherever 
they will happen to trust him at the highest prices, 
instead of taking his money after he gets it and 
buying his goods at the lowest prices, or sell his 
time, as they call it, at a large discount, because he is 
too hard pressed by creditors to wait till the pay- 
master comes along I think, as the old farmer 
said, he had better owe a hundred dollars for a 
pair of oxen, or something else that he would have 
to show for it. If a man, working for wages, is 
determined to spend it all, there is no need of 
spending it before it is earned and keeping himself 
in the distress of debt. He can economize suffi- 
ciently to get a month's wages ahead and be thus 
far above board. 

And then the expediency of running into debt 
for a pair of oxen, or any thing else that it is pro- 
per, sometimes, to go in debt for, depends on cer- 
tain other things. If a young farmer should run 
in debt for a pair of oxen, so as to produce more 
on his farm, and then on the strength of having 
oxen and producing more, he should incur extra 
10 



146 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

expenses in his living more than his extra income, 
that debt would be a damage to him, although the 
oxen might be on hand to show for it. 

The young man mentioned in my No. XIV, who 
incurred a debt for business purposes, made a mis- 
take, in view of the fact that his expenses were to 
be more than his profits. He had no business to 
run into that debt. He should have kept himself 
a hired servant. He would have been the better 
for it. But in the other phase of that business — 
the economic phase — if that man and his wife had 
taken my advice, and lived cheaply, that debt 
would have been the making of them. The busi- 
ness was better than wages, and he might have 
been above board and in an increasing business to- 
day. As it was, I think the debt was bad for him. 

And so, my young friends, in all cases of going 
into debt for business purposes, it depends very 
largely on the habits of yourself and your wife 
after the business is in blast. If you intend to put 
on style and make a splurge upon the strength of 
your business that you owe for, I say by all means 
do not go into any such debt. It will be pretty 
sure to extinguish you. Beware of that kind of 
indebtedness. You have no business to be in debt 
with your wife wearing diamonds or other extrav- 
agances. But if you see a good opening for a 
business that you are competent to do, and you 
have the energy, industry and integrity to run it 
successfulty,and you and your wife are determined 



ON RUNNING INTO DEBT. 14 7 

to begin down upon the hard pan of fortune to 
build yourselves up, then I say by all means go 
into debt for such a business and such a life as 
that, if you can do so on fair terms. It is scarcely 
possible that you should fail. I have seen many 
fortunes made by running into debt, and seen many 
insignificant people get down flatter than they 
started, by it, all by adopting or rejecting the 
rules aforesaid. It all depends on that. 

Then there is another sort of debt that I think 
is to be recommended. In one of my articles on 
w doing something," I advised young men out of 
work to go West, or go somewhere, and locate 
themselves in the cultivation of the soil, to build 
for themselves independent business and indepen- 
dent homes. This involves the idea of buying 
land on credit. I think it is always safe for a 
young man to buy land on credit for that purpose, 
provided only' that he buys good and productive 
land and at a fair price. Whether he is thrifty or 
unthrifty he will be none the worse for having land 
and owing for it. It is like the old farmer and his 
oxen and a hundred dollar debt for them : the 
land will be worth the money. The most of the 
western part of this State was settled in that way 
— poor men buying the land on credit — and most 
of the old generation of rich farmers made their 
wealth by buying land on credit, with ample time 
to pay for it from the produce of the soil. And I 
think most new settlements are made in this way. 



148 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

But in this business human nature is about the 
same as in any other ; some will be improvident 
and fail. Success depends on the same principles 
as in any other business — on habits of industry and 
economy. Those who indulge in the luxury of 
continual large indebtedness at the stores and else- 
where, for current consumptive expenses, will fail 
and give up their land to more prudent and sensi- 
ble people ; but, as I have said, the land debt will 
make them none the worse, because the land will 
be there to show for it. The other kind of debts 
are what does the mischief. In all my experience 
as a land office clerk, I never knew a thrifty land 
debtor, woiking on his land for a business and a 
home, who was not benefitted by such debt. And 
I never knew an industrious man, working as afore- 
said, whether thrifty or not, to be injured by such 
debt. 

Nevertheless we hear a good deal about the op- 
pressions of land creditors, and the hardships of 
land debtors. But I have noticed that that hue 
and cry always comes from the imprudent, im- 
provident, spendthrift class of land debtors — the 
inefficients, who never pay much of anything on 
their land, and never would accumulate anything 
anywhere, in any work or any business. They are 
the agitators — the anti-renters, who boldly strike 
out to dispute the title of their creditors, merely 
because they have been indulged to live upon the 
land a good while without paying for it, as their 



DECISION OF CHARACTER. 149 

more provident neighbors have done, just as this 
same class of people in other vocations take pos- 
session of railroads and burn buildings to compel 
the giving out to them of what they have not 
earned. 

On the whole, while debt is not desirable per se, 
the facilities that it sometimes offers to poor young 
men of the right make-up, for a start in life, are 
valuable and should be accepted. 



XVII. 

DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

The phrenologists tell us that there is an organ 
of the brain that they call firmness ; whose office is 
to hold the individual to his purposes, and prevent 
a wavering, zig-zag, undecisive, vacillating course 
of life. This faculty of the mind, like all others, 
greatly varies in strength in different individuals. 
Some people are naturally so firm and stubborn 
that it is well-nigh impossible, in any case, to change 
their preconceived opinions or their practices; 
others are so deficient in this quality as always to 
be drifting about, never having any mind of their 
own, always liable to be persuaded, even against 
their own better judgment — weak, unstable, and 
therefore inefficient. 

All the desirable qualities of the mind can be 
improved by habitual use — cultivation. As the 
muscles of the blacksmith's right arm become en- 
larged and invigorated by the continuous wielding 



150 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

of his heavy hammer, so the various organs of the 
mind become invigorated by habitual use. 

The faculty of firmness — decision of character — 
more especially, perhaps, than any other quality of 
the mind, is within the control of the mind itself. 
While an individual may be naturally fickle and in- 
decisive, if he has an ordinary degree of common 
sense, he can, at will, and at once, overcome that 
defect in his character, as it represents all essential 
matters in business, and especially as to refraining 
from any habits that his own better judgment tells 
him are improper or inexpedient. Every sane man 
is the master of his own actions in these respects — 
he can control himself if he will. With a deficiency 
in the organ of tune it is very difficult to become 
a good musician. Without a fair development of 
the organ of constructiveness, it requires a good 
deal of cultivation to become a good mechanic. 
And so of most other organs of the mind. But 
with defective firmness a man can be sufficiently 
firm. If he has been indulging in any bad habit, 
he can change it all if he will. Without a certain 
amount of natural endowment a man cannot learn 
a tune, or learn to build a machine, or learn to be 
a good mathematician, though of strong mind in 
other respects; but any man of common under- 
standing can refrain from bad associations, or bad 
habits, can refrain from wasting his money, or doing 
anything that his judgment tells him that he had 
better not do; and yet thousands goto ruin, in 



DECISION OF CHARACTER 151 

spite of themselves, really against their own will, 
to please somebody, merely because they drift along 
listlessly, without asserting their own individu- 
ality ; having no distinct identity, being only atoms 
of a general mass — a part of somebody else. 

And this matter of self-control — independent 
decision of character — is an important factor in the 
make-up of a young man with reference to his suc- 
cess in life, and it is especially apropos just herein 
this series of papers — applicable in respect to all 
the instruction and advice that I have given to my 
young readers ; for all the information that can be 
given, and all the convictions that can be produced, 
are wasted upon any man without the decision of 
character to utilize them. For instance, a young 
man in receipt of a large salary, will say — if not 
out loud, he will say it in his actions — " Yes, I 
know that Mr. Heermans is right in his lectures on 
economy ; I know that I ought to save a good deal 
more of my income now in my days of prosperity 
than I am saving ; I know that many others with a 
good deal less income have saved a good deal more, 
and have really made themselves quite independent ; 
but somehow, I don't know how it is, but really I 
— I cannot ; my habits are so fixed — this and that 
and the other thing come along that call for my 
money, and really I cannot refrain. And then, I 
know he is right about these social customs — the 
cigars, a little wine or beer, the social games and 
small gamblings, the fineries and embellishments, 



152 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

etc., etc. ; but really, like the charm of the serpent 
they seem to draw me on and on, and if it carries 
me to destruction I cannot help it." 

You can. It is only to put on the manhood of a 
man, and learn to say NO. If you are not an im- 
becile you can control yourself. You can control 
your own money. To say you cannot is to re- 
nounce your own manhood, to write yourself down 
a blank in creation, and submit to bondage. All 
you have to do is to begin the process of saying 
NO. When the impulse comes upon you to expend 
any sum of money for anything that can be dis- 
pensed with and you be none the worse for it — 
anything that j r our own better judgment tells you 
that you have no need of, in any of the thousand 
ways in which such useless demands will come upon 
you, learn to say NO. If you have a wife victim- 
ized by stjde and fashion so that she wants you to 
invest all your income therein, and even, perhaps, 
spend your money before it is earned, learn to say 
NO. If you have a good chance to relieve yourself 
from some onerous labor by faithlessness to an em- 
ployer, when you think he cannot know it, learn to 
say NO. Whenever you see a first-rate opportunity 
to make a large or small speculation by any kind 
of sharp practice, by dishonesty in your business, 
when you think you know that no human being can 
ever find it out, learn to say NO. When you meet 
with brilliant young friends, in gilded places, 
which would be wicked but for the gild, and it 



DECISION OF CHARACTER. 153 

would be pleasant, and social, and friendly, and 
fashionable to indulge in a cigar or a drink, learn 
to say NO. When you find yourself in social in- 
tercourse, in your mother's parlor, it ma} r be, or 
elsewhere, attended with all the brilliance, and 
sparkle and enjoyment of fashionable society, and 
the elements of the gambler's trade, or of the 
drunkard's education, are introduced — the hospi- 
talities of high life, perad venture, are prostituted 
to the cultivation of the arts of these trades of 
hell, oh then of all other times in your life, learn to 
say NO. Finally, in respect to all the innumerable 
follies and foibles, that seem to demand your at- 
tention and that your better judgment tells you 
that you ought not to indulge in, learn to say NO. 

As I have said, this matter of self-control — de- 
cision of character — is entirely subject to your own 
volition. The first negative to a habit of life re- 
quires more or less of nerve and self-denial ; but 
any sane man can do it if he will ; and the habitual 
use of that will power soon makes it easy. In fact 
the habit, with the enjoyment of its beneficial re- 
sults, soon makes itself enjoyable. 

In short, this quality of decision of character is 
an indispensable element in the make-up of real 
manhood, indispensable to any real success in life. 
The destitution and distress, the vice and immor- 
ality, the intemperance and crime, that the world 
is afflicted with, are due largely, very largely to 
the want of it. Cultivate it, young man, and start 
out as a full grown man,andnotalwaysbeapiginy. 



154 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

XYIII. 

HOW TO INVEST. 

Those of my young readers who have not deter- 
mined to practice upon the advice that I have al- 
ready given in these papers, so as to have some- 
thing to invest as a saving for the future and to help 
them to earn something more all along, need not 
read this number. It will not be of any use to 
them. Any man who has no money to invest, and 
is determined to not have any, has no need to spend 
any time to learn how to invest it. But the matter 
of investment is of the highest importance to those 
who have something to save ; for I have often seen 
the savings of the severe industry and rigid econ- 
omy of years, yea, sometimes of a lifetime, swept 
away at a single swoop by bad investment. First, 
then, 

HOW NOT TO INVEST. 

Not in banks. In general there is this about 
banks as depositories of money for customers : the 
management is independent of the depositors, and 
really they have no reliable security for their mon- 
ey. So long as the bank is prosperous and the 
management is honest, the depositors may be re- 
garded as safe ; but of this, ordinary depositors 
cannot know ; their money must run the risk of 
the unskillfulness, the misfortunes and the dishon- 
esty of the bank. I need not cite particular cases 
to prove all this. All are familiar with sufficient 
facts in point to show the impropriety of bank de- 
posits as permanent investment of money. In fact 



HOW TO INVEST. 155 

our ordinary banks of deposit are not intended for 
such investment, but only for the temporary custo- 
dy, for the safe keeping of the loose money of busi- 
ness men. 

And I do not see that savings banks, designed 
for the more permanent investment of money, and 
on interest, are any less liable to the objections 
named than other banks, as the great number of 
recent failures of large and popular saving banks 
will show. Within the last few years immense 
numbers of savings bank depositors have been 
compelled to pay largely out of their hard earn- 
ings, for the misfortunes, the mistakes and the dis- 
honesty of men not under their control. 

And more than this ; if saving banks could be 
made entirely safe to their depositors, they only 
undertake to do for them what they can do for 
themselves much more to their own advantage. 
The legitimate business of a savings bank is to 
borrow money at a low rate of interest, and lend it 
again at a higher rate. The theory of the transac- 
tion is that the bank takes good mortgage security 
for the money, which is an indirect security to the 
depositor. And so it amounts to this : say the 
bank pays six per cent, to the depositor and re- 
ceives seven per cent, from its debtor ; the deposi- 
tor pays the bank one per cent, for investing his 
money for him, besides running all the risks before 
alluded to, when he can just as well do it all him- 
self without any risk, or expense, as I shall try to 
explain further on. 



156 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Not invest in friendship. I have known a good 
many hard-working, thrifty people ruined by lend- 
ing their money to relatives, or by dealing with 
them in other ways. The adage that u there is no 
friendship in trade," is always just, and the only 
safe one to be observed in dealings between rela- 
tives or special friends. Its philosophy is very 
simple. For instance, if I deal with a brother, and 
he expects me to be more liberal, or lenient, or 
careless with him than I would with a stranger be- 
cause he is my brother, the ready answer is that I 
am just as closely related to him as he is to me, so 
that I have the same claim upon him for liberality 
and a good bargain in any respect as he has upon 
me, and this matter of friendship exactly neutral- 
izes itself^ and we should deal at arm's length, pre- 
cisely as we would with strangers. So, my friends, 
if you have money to invest on interest, lend it to 
a friend if it will be any accommodation to him, 
but be sure to require the same security that you 
would require of any stranger. I long ago found 
out that friendship is no security for good solid 
money. 

Not invest in charity. I do not mean by this that 
you should not make suitable contributions to all 
meritorious charities — on which subject see further 
on — but when you invest your money to make it earn 
you something, and to get it back some time, never 
try to do that on charitable principles. Never lend 
a man money merely because he needs it badly, 
because he may suffer loss if he does not get it, or 



HOW NOT TO INVEST. 157 

because of any other exigencies of his, unless his 
security is all right. His needs, or his troubles, or 
his exigencies will not pay back your money when 
your own needs or troubles or exigencies may re- 
quire it. Business of any kind cannot be safely 
mixed with charity. I have often heard men 
clamor for employment upon the ground that they 
needed it, when they were notoriously unfit and 
unprofitable hands to be employed; that is, they 
were poor workmen and shiftless, slouchy workers. 
And I have often heard people plead for loans of 
money merely because they needed it badly, when 
their security was insufficient for a prudent man to 
accept. It cannot be done. The employer who 
hires unprofitable hands because they need employ- 
ment is sure to go under ; and the money-lender 
who lends his money merely because the borrower 
needs it, will soon find his money all gone, with 
nothing to show for it but wasted paper. No, my 
friends, let your business always be done on busi- 
ness principles, and let your charity stand by itself. 
Not invest in mere personal securities. I shall 
not say that this should never be done ; but as a 
general rule I have observed that it is an unsafe 
practice for those who are seeking permanent in- 
vestment. For small sums temporarily, while ac- 
cumulating sufficient for a permanent investment, 
it is of course allowable. By proper precaution it 
can be made reasonably safe ; but for investment 
for years there is no need of taking any such risk, 



158 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

and it should not be thought of. I have seen many 
well-to-do men ruined by lending their money to 
so-called rich men on their personal obligations 
without security. 

Not invest in life insurance. Notwithstanding 
the general popularity of life insurance as a sup- 
posed necessary investment for everybody, I will 
venture to have my say about it. I think it is un- 
business like, wasteful, and objectionable in many 
respects; and, 

First, it often defeats the very object for which a 
poor man toils and economizes, i. e., to accumulate 
a fund for himself for old age or time of disability, 
as well as for his family. No member of a family 
— not even the wife — has any right to ask a hus- 
band to impoyerish himself during life for her ben- 
efit after death. He who earns the money surely 
ought not to put it out of his own reach during his 
own life. He ought to have at least an equal share 
in it with his family during his life in case of need. 
But it is not uncommon for men in moderate cir- 
cumstances to take large life insurance policies, re- 
quiring all their surplus income to keep them up ; 
in fact keeping them poor and on a strain all their 
lives to make their wives or somebody else rich 
when they die. It is unjust. I do not appreciate 
that kind of accumulation, and especially as there 
is no need of it ; it is so easy for any man to invest 
his money, not out of his own reach, and yet for 
the benefit of his family too. 



HOW NOT TO INVEST. 159 

Secondly , life insurance is an extremely hazardous 
investment. In this respect it is liable to all the 
objections above noted as to banks, and more. 
When we invest in a life insurance company it is 
for life. We cannot draw the money out at pleas- 
ure as from a bank. We not only risk the solvency 
of the company for the time being, but for life. 
The return of the money, or any of it, depends on 
the skill, success, and honesty of somebody, we 
know not who, so long as we shall live. I think 
the recent wholesale collapse of life insurance com- 
panies is a sufficient demonstration of this point ; 
and it is only a very common result of trusting 
poor human nature with large sums of money with- 
out security Some of the surviving companies are 
boasting of their own success and their solvency, 
but how can a creditor be safe for twenty years to 
come with any of them ? If a young man takes a 
policy in the best of them to-day, who can know 
how many sharpers and thieves will get control of 
the funds before he dies ? In any other shape no 
prudent man would think of investing on so long 
credit without the best of security. They talk 
about legislative protection to policy holders. 
Time out of mind legislative wisdom has tinkered 
at this problem of securing bank creditors and in- 
surance creditors against loss, and the more they 
tinker the more we see that there is no security. It 
cannot be done until human nature gets a good 
deal improved. 



160 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

Thirdly, irrespective of the foregoing objections, 
life insurance is too costly. If all the companies 
could always remain solvent, and all policy holders 
should get all they contract for, it would cost about 
twice as much as it comes to. Life insurance com- 
panies are careful to publish their extreme cases, 
where somebody has received a large amount of 
money for a very small investment in life insurance. 
For instance: Mr. so-and-so paid a hundred dol- 
lars for a five thousand dollar policy, and in thirty 
days or so he was dead, and his family were saved 
from want by that life insurance. We very often 
see such items floating in the papers — paid for of 
course by life insurance agents. That all looks 
very well ; but that is the lottery part of it. When 
they print one such case they do not print the other 
hundred cases where the policy holders do not have 
the luck to die so soon, and pay enough more than 
they are to get back to make up such large sums as 
are advertised as aforesaid, together with expenses 
and profits of the business. Take a prosperous, 
honest life insurance company, and it must make 
out of its policy holders, altogether, 1st, all that 
it pays out for death claims ; 2nd, all its expenses ; 
3d, its profits for the shareholders, whatever they 
may be. And from my observation of the rate of 
expenses of the best companies, in the way of com- 
missions, salaries, and otherwise, I think it is not 
too much to say that the cost to the policy holders, 
on an average, is not less than two dollars for one 



HOW NOT TO INVEST. 161 

received back upon death claims ; so that by in- 
vesting money in life insurance, we must pay one 
dollar for taking care of another dollar for us ; 
which we can do a great deal better for ourselves 
and keep both of the dollars. 

Some companies are quite ingenious in making 
up nice schemes and figure work to show that policy 
holders are to get their fingers on the large surplus 
funds, or something else, and get all their money 
back during life, and more too, and leave a pretty 
good fortune for their heirs. But all this is of a 
piece with the thieves and sharpers who are always 
offering us something for nothing. It is a fraud. 

Put your money into some safe investment, on 
interest, and in the average of cases it will amount 
to twice as much for the beneficiaries as they would 
get from life insurance, if not somehow cheated out 
of the whole. It will not quite do to say that life 
insurance is a fraud, but very many people have 
found it so. 

Not invest in railroad stocks, or any other joint 
stock concerns that you cannot know much about, 
and that are beyond your control ; or in any other 
institutions that offer wonderful inducements to 
investors. These are always hazardous, if not en- 
tire frauds. Now the question recurs : 

HOW TO INVEST. 

A young man in business on his own account, 
be it what it may, should, of course, invest his 
money in his own business. As to others. 
11 



162 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

1. There can be no better investment of a suit- 
able amount of a thrifty young man's savings than 
in a homestead, whenever the time comes for 
housekeeping. But this requires some discretion. 
Many years ago an old friend of mine in Geneva 
told me his experience in buying a house. He was 
a clerk in an office at a good salary, and had been 
living in a passable house, at little or no rent. 
The speculating times of 1836 came on, and in a 
little fever of fictitious prosperity he must have a 
better house ; and so he bought a high-priced house 
and paid for it, but in a course of years that 
house cost him a fortune. That is to say the in- 
terest on the investment, with the concomitant 
extra expenses, all along, all of which would have 
been saved if he had been content in the old home, 
would have made his family comfortably rich ; and 
they would have been just as comfortable and as 
highly respected all the time. Such experiences 
are worth something ; and yet they are only a 
matter of a little figure work that any body can 
do, after all. Let us see what an excess of $2,000 
in the price of a homestead will cost the owner in 
a course of years, in the mere interest at seven per 
cent, compounded once a year. 

In one year, ... $ 140.00 
In ten years, . . . 1,934.31 

In twenty years, . . . 4, 139.39 

In thirty years, . . . 13,224.56 

So to persons of moderate income who wish to 



HOW NOT TO INVEST. 163 

accumulate something through life, it is important 
that their homesteads shall not be too high priced. 

When I see a young couple starting out with 
twice or three times as costly a house as they need, 
and perhaps owe for some of it, I thing of my Gen- 
eva friend, and think that such a house maybe the 
wasting of a little fortune. 

2. Judicious investments in land are usually 
good and profitable ; but of course this all turns 
on the question of what investments are judicious. 
I think that vacant lands in a growing town, or 
good farming lands in an improving locality, at 
fair prices, are always safe to buy ; while lands in 
a dead town, or poor lands in a poor neighborhood 
cannot often be profitable to a buyer. Improved 
farms in a high-priced neighborhood are not likely 
to be profitable as a mere investment. It is usu- 
ally d ifficult to make the income and the advance 
n price pay the interest and expenses, unless some 
fortuitous circumstances add to their value. The 
great advantage of farming land to a man is for 
him to live on it, and work and improve it himself, 
to make his living on it while it grows into wealth. 

Land speculation, like all other speculative busi- 
ness, is always a good deal of a lottery. Some- 
times fortunes are made in it — sometimes the re 
verse. But for a mere investment of money, to 
earn something for a course of years, the average 
young man would do a safer and better business 
to invest on interest than in land, and so 



164 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

3. Good real estate money securities are to be 
recommended as the best of all investments of 
money for a course of years to earn money for its 
owner. There cannot be any better or simpler 
way of investing money on interest than this. 
There is never any need of trusting money in sav- 
ings or other banks — or on mere personal securi- 
ties ; for it is always easy to invest any sum, from 
$50 upwards, on good real estate security, and at 
good interest — not depending on anybody's skill in 
business, or their success or honesty — security 
firm and steadfast, that cannot take to itself wings 
and fly away. 

4. Government bonds are always to be recom- 
mended as good and safe investment, and always 
convertible in the market — always desirable to 
those who have not a horror of being bloated bond- 
holders ; but not now as profitable as good real es- 
tate securities. 



XIX. 

BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. 

Hoarding money, or accumulating property, for 
its own sake, is not "the chief end of man." 
Worshiping Mammon should be especially guarded 
against. " Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." 
But the accumulation of property is the founda- 
tion of civilization. There is a good deal of sense- 
less clamor about wealth ; its greed, its oppres- 
sions, and its wickedness in general, as if it were 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES 165 

reprehensible, per se, for a man to be the owner of 
any property ; but I would like to know what these 
croakers would be but for the property accumula- 
ted by somebody. 

Benefactions and charities and poor taxes come 
mostly from the provident, accumulating classes. 
They must; for the other sort never have much of 
any thing to invest in that way. 

But what I started out to say is : all through life 
every man, when prospering, ought, systematically, 
to invest something in beneficial enterprises for 
other people. If you are of the spendthrift kind — 
using up all you make as you go along — you can 
just as well as not halt a little in your extravagan- 
ces, now and then, to aid a meritorious charity. If 
you are of the provident sort — trying to lay up 
treasures for the future — of course you cannot af- 
ford to omit some investment, all along, in that 
kind of "banks." 

I think we have no right to live entirely to self. 
All through these little discourses I have tried to 
inculcate the idea that a material part of our busi- 
ness in the world is to be of some practical utility 
to our fellow men. And while there are many 
other ways to do this, reasonable contributions to 
meritorious benefactions cannot be omitted without 
the loss of much satisfaction, not to say a derelic- 
tion of real duty. 

But then this matter of donations requires great 
care and discrimination. It is not everything that 



166 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

comes along, pleading for aid, that should be aided, 
by cny means. He that donates indiscriminately 
to every so-called charity that presents itself with 
a plausible story, will be quite likely to do as much 
harm as good by his liberality. 

I think the work of the voluntary, systematic 
church charities, organized in the name of aid so- 
cieties, or any other names, and other organiza- 
tions, for the purpose of hunting up people to pro- 
vide for, is mostly of that character. There is al- 
ways plenty of pauperism to be found if we look 
for it ; always an unlimited number of people ready 
to be provided for by others. And when it is un- 
derstood that an aid society is ready every winter 
to relieve all the destitution in a town, that fact 
will create an unlimited quantity of destitution. 
Many who might save money enough during sum- 
mer time to carry them through the winter, rely- 
ing on the aid society for a comfortable winter, 
are pretty sure to spend all their earnings in sum- 
mer, and claim their winter's support at the hands 
of the public. The story of a woman who called 
at a society's quarters to inquire how much they 
allowed to their beneficiaries to buy dress trim- 
mings with, and that of another who wanted a baby 
carriage, are not entire fictions. 

One of the great social problems of the day is 
how to provide for all the pauperism, and make it 
very comfortable and respectable without inciting 
the propagation and cultivation of pauperism as a 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. 161 

business. It cannot be done. Start a free soup 
house, in any town or city, and you will at once 
have twice as many soup eaters as can be supplied. 
Offer to distribute a thousand loaves of bread a 
day to the needy and you will be sure to have two 
thousand calls as soon as known — no difference 
whether there is any real destitution or not. Build 
a luxurious Poor House, provide it with all the 
comfort and enjoyment, and respectability, and 
you will always have it full if it be understood 
that all destitute people are to have a chance. 

Probably more than three-quarters of all pauper- 
ism is self-imposed. As I have tried to show, in 
former papers, extraordinary calamities excepted, 
every man and wife can, if they will, accumulate 
enough in health to carry them through ordinary 
sickness, and accumulate enough through life to 
support them, comfortably at least, in helpless old 
age, if they come to that. And as to able-bodied 
pauperism there is never any good cause for any 
considerable amount of it, and none only tempor- 
arily. There is always something somewhere for 
everybody to do to earn a living. Even in this 
exceptional time of stagnation in business and 
labor, it has just now been ascertained by detec- 
tives that the great armies of tramps are not men 
who cannot get work, but those who do not want 
to get it. The best way to deal with that kind of 
pauperism is to let it starve to death if it will. 

" The world owes me a living,'' is the plea of the 



168 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

spendthrift, as he goes along through life, using 
up all his earnings, and depending upon the public 
to fill out his living at the last, or when disabled at 
any time. And boldly and brazenly he asserts this 
claim when he becomes a public charge. And on 
this theory our public charities are instituted and 
conducted. The plea is false. The world does not 
owe anyone anything only what he makes for him- 
self or gets in some other honest way. All that is 
done for pauperism and mendicancy, by law, or by 
voluntary associations, or otherwise, is pure benevo- 
lent gratuity. To come down to original principles, 
the recipient has no shadow of right to it. To go 
back to first principles : the true theory of human 
life, as well by Divine law as by human philosophy , 
is that every individual, independent, self-existent 
man is to provide for his own wants through life ; 
and to this end he is entitled to all the fruits of his 
own industry. Nobody else can have any just 
claim upon any of them. Two men go out upon 
pieces of earth, to subdue and cultivate them, and 
to make for themselves a living. Both are equally 
fruitful according to the labor and care bestowed. 
One is laborious and prudent ; his fruits are abun- 
dant and he economizes them ; hoards them, if you 
please, for future use. The other does not quite 
see the need of all that hard work and hoarding. 
He has a plenty for the summer time, and he con- 
sumes all his productions or lets them run to waste. 
The winter comes, and he has no corn, no bread, 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. 169 

no anything. Then, like the foolish virgins, calling 
upon the wiser ones for some of their oil, he de- 
, mands of his thrifty neighbor : " Give me your 
corn, lest I starve and die — you owe me a living." 
In this simple illustration the fallacy of the plea is 
clearly seen. The just penalty of his indolence 
and waste, imposed by the laws of our being, is 
starvation. There is no just claim upon anybody 
for relief. 

Do the complications of civilized society change 
that law so as to give one man any right to live upon 
the fruits of any other man's labor ? In entering 
into that state each man surrenders some of his 
natural rights for the general good, as a considera- 
tion for his own protection in his life and his 
property ; but no man acquires a right to omit to 
provide for himself and his own house, and depend 
on neighbors for what he might have secured and 
hoarded up for himself. So that the just penalty of 
the natural law of human life — the law of self- 
preservation — for improvidence, remains the same 
as in the rudest state of life — distress and star- 
vation. 

And then, if every self-made pauper should be 
left to starve, he would have no just cause for 
complaint. It is his own deliberate choice. " What- 
soever a man soweth that shall he also reap." And 
if there were no interference with that law I think 
there would be much less suffering from poverty 
than there is. Then people would not waste their 
surpluses, in prosperous days, on unnecessary 



110 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

luxuries until after making ample provision for 
themselves and families for future contingencies. 
As it is, the ample provisions for the care and 
comfort of every species of destitution is the 
cause of most of it. 

Well, what then ? Shall pauperism be cured by 
starving it ? Not at all. All persons destitute of 
the absolute necessaries of life, and unable, from 
physical disability, to earn them, must be provided 
for. The conscience and the benevolence of this 
age cannot see people starve, be the cause of their 
destitution what it may ; even though, as an exam- 
ple, it might, in the long run, be beneficial to the. 
race. But I think the multitudinous charities of 
various phases, hunting up objects of care, and 
thus encouraging and cultivating the profession of 
mendicancy, should be discountenanced. I think 
there should be one uniform system of State Poor 
Houses, not luxurious or attractive, but providing 
for the bare necessaries of life for all destitute in- 
dividuals ; for I do not see why it should not 
always be understood that the spendthrift im- 
provident class are to suffer some of the just and 
natural penalties of their misconduct. Then, all 
individual beggary, and all able-bodied beggary 
should be summarily crushed out. Contributions 
to those are worse than wasted. 

With pauperism cared for entirely by the State, 
under laws sufficient to take in all its phases, our 
whole duty is done when we pay our taxes. 

Of course all this does not preclude us from the 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. 171 

pleasure of neighborly aid to friends, or respond- 
ing to the humane impulses of consanguinity. 

Now, having disposed of the question of com- 
mon pauperism, to my own satisfaction at least, 
there are various other subjects of voluntary con- 
tribution that demand everybody's attention all 
along through life, more or less of which belong in 
the same category where I have placed promiscu- 
ous contributions for common pauperism. Of 
course every individual must be guided by his own 
judgment as to the choice of objects for his bounty ; 
but I will venture a few suggestions. 

The support of the gospel ministry is a duty 
that devolves on everybody. If you are a member 
of a church organization, a reasonable share of its 
expenses is an honest indebtedness upon you. 
What that reasonable share is, is a question for 
svery one to decide for himself ; for there is no 
compulsion. It is usually expected that church 
members are to contribute in proportion to the 
money that they are worth. I think this busi- 
ness should be done on business principles, exactly 
like any other business, and not upon charitable 
principles. For illustration, take a church of two 
hundred members, costing, for all expenses, three 
thousand dollars a year. Say fifty of them are 
really poor, and not able to pay any thing. So far 
as they are concerned the church is a charity. They 
are conceded all the privileges of the sanctuary 
without price. The other hundred and fifty we 



172 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

suppose to be able to pay, each, an equal share of 
the $3,000 — say twenty dollars. But some are 
richer than others. Now I would like to know on 
what principle of business, or of equity, or of 
morals, it is that fifty of them should be expected 
to pay fifty dollars each, and the other hundred 
only five dollars. For everything else that they 
indulge in — food, clothing, cigars, fineries, jewelry, 
and all other embellishments to go to the sanctuary 
with, they all pay for alike; and why one should 
pay more than another toward the church expenses 
— all being able to pay their equal share — I do not 
know. Then as to the ability : any man who pays 
ten aents a day for cigars or any other unnecessary 
indulgence, or fifty dollars a year for style for him- 
self or family, is able to pay twenty dollars for the 
support of his church, whether he has any accu- 
mulated capital or not. And if a man has denied 
himself, so as to save something, all through life, I 
do not see that this is any reason why he should 
pay a higher price for his flour, or meat, or coal, or 
clothing, o r church sitting, than he who expends 
all his income as he goes along. 

But church covenant obligations require the 
members to pay according to their ability, I may 
be told. Let us see about that. I do not suppose 
that means that every member shall pay all that he 
is able to pay for the local church services. A 
church of two hundred members, costing $3,000 to 
run it, may have a membership able to pay a hun- 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. 173 

dred thousand dollars. It does not mean that they 
shall pay that sum. It does not mean that a mil- 
lionaire member, who can pay the whole $3,000 as 
well as not, shall pay it all. It does not mean that 
he shall pay $2,850 of it, and the other hundred 
and fifty members, who are well able to pay their 
equal share, pay only one dollar each, if an assess- 
ment upon the value of the property of each would 
bring it so. That would substantially extinguish 
all obligations of the 150 members. It would be 
to require one man to pay the obligations of a 
hundred and fifty who are abundantly able to pay 
for themselves. 

A local church organization is a sort of business 
partnership, for the equal benefit of all its mem- 
bers, and not a charity. A preacher is hired, fuel 
and lights, and other incidentals are provided, 
strictly on business principles, for the equal benefit 
of all, and not as a charity to all, or to anyportion 
of the members who do not need such charity. So 
that I think the covenant obligation means that 
every member who is able to pay his or her equal 
share shall do so, and those not able to pay such 
equal share shall pay what they are able to. It is 
not benevolence, but business. 

But then there is another class of church and 
other enterprises that are purely charitable, that 
are worthy of every man's attention ; and they 
come under a different rule. To send the Gospel 
to other lands, to give the Bible to the poor, to 



17 4 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

inaugurate church work anywhere away from home' 
etc. , are purely charitable. They are for the benefit of 
other people and not for ourselves. That is giving 
and not paying. And such gifts should be gradu- 
ated chiefly by the wealth of the donors. 

If you are not a church member, I think the ol> 
ligation upon you to support the gospel ministry 
is not much the less for that reason. The Church 
of Christ does not exist merely for the benefit of 
its present members. It is for you, reader, whether 
now a member of it or not. It is for your family, 
if you have one, and if not it will be for your 
family when the time comes that you have. If you 
are not an entire unbeliever, you expect, sometime, 
to embrace it and profit by it. At any rate }^ou 
know you cannot afford to dispense with the 
churches in your locality. I think there is no man 
of common sense, be his religious belief what it 
may, who would think of making his permanent 
home, and investing his money, in a town of no 
church — no gospel preached. Not long ago, on a 
railroad train, I heard a discussion between a 
Christian and an infidel, on the subject of the 
Christian religion. After a good deal of sharp talk 
the infidel closed substantially as follows : " But 
the world cannot do without the churches. With- 
out the restraining influence of the Christian faith 
upon the depravity of human nature, vice and im- 
morality would run riot, and the world would go 
to the bad," which I think is generally admitted, 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. 175 

even by infidels, to be true, and is tantamount to 
saying that Christianity makes people better ; in- 
fidelity makes them worse — in this life at least, by 
infidel admission — and then if there is any here- 
after at all, is it very unreasonable to conclude that 
these results are to continue over, in-as-much as we 
see everywhere in nature, the truth of the scriptural 
declaration that " whatsoever a man soweth that 
shall he also reap." And then what is the infidel 
doctrine good for ? What are all the labors, and 
arguments and publications of infidels, from 
Thomas Paine down, for ? When it is admitted 
that the world cannot afford to do without the 
Christian religion, that admission extinguishes all 
the arguments that ever have been or ever can be 
adduced for infidelity. When it is admitted that 
Christianity makes people better — and infidelity 
makes them worse — it is elear enough that we can- 
not afford to dispense with the Christian religion 
— cannot afford to indulge in infidelity. If Chris- 
tianity makes people in general better, it will make 
you better, my infidel reader. If infidelity makes 
people in general worse, it will make you worse. If 
society in general cannot afford infidelity in place of 
Christianity, you, as an individual cannot afford it. 
I think this is conclusive, and you that persist in 
infidelity are persisting in what you confessedly 
know to be the worse for the race — what you know to 
be wrong. And this is the end of argument on the 
question. How futile and how profitless is the 



176 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

hunt for a substitute for Christianity when it is so 
frankly admitted that the world cannot do without 
Christianity. The explorations on this subject 
prove only that the natural man is dissatisfied with 
himself and wants to find an easier road to Heaven 
than through Christ. It cannot be done. " There 
is none other name under Heaven given among 
men, whereby we must be saved." 

And the conclusion of the whole matter is that 
everybody — spiritual Christians, nominal Christ- 
ians, and infidels ought to take a liberal share in 
the support of the Christian ministry, not as gift 
or charity, but as honest indebtedness to civili- 
zation. 

In this connection I will venture a criticism that 
may be disapproved of by many of my readers. It 
is claimed by some ministers of the gospel that in 
devoting their lives to the ministry they are mak- 
ing great pecuniary sacrifices. They think so, be- 
cause they see some men in other vocations earning 
more money than they do. I think they are mis- 
taken. An ordinary New York lawyer, or merchant, 
struggling along with hard work to make a bare 
economical living, might look upon Henry Ward 
Beecher, or T. DeWitt Talmage, or Chapin, or 
Crosby, or many other high-salaried clergymen, 
and say chat they are making great sacrifices to 
society by being lawyers, or merchants, just as the 
common run of preachers — or more commonly the 
lower run of them — look upon here and there a 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. l^T 

successful man in other business and think that 
they are making sacrifices by preaching the gos- 
pel. I was told by a young Methodist preacher 
some years ago, that he could make a good deal 
more money in some other business, when he was 
making more money than any man of his age and 
ability within my knowledge, unless where large 
capital was invested. Undoubtedly there are cases 
where men of ability do sacrifice pecuniary in- 
terests by preaching the gospel — work for less 
money pay than their talents would command in 
some other business ; but as a rule I think preach- 
ers are as well paid, according to their abilities, as 
any other profession or pursuit. If there ever was 
a time in this country when the ministry was not 
adequately paid, that time is past. But there are 
a good many preachers whose salaries are very, 
very small. Yes, and so there are other people 
who earn not more than seventy-five cents a day 
for the year round ; but they get all they are 
worth in the market. And my opinion is that the 
lower-priced preachers are getting all they are 
worth, and all they would be worth in any other 
work. 

There are a good many men, in all vocations, 
who think they are making great sacrifices by con- 
descending to live. They are always badly used. 
They are not appreciated. They are worth more 
than they are rated at. So they think. It is the 
inefficient class of men — those who not only can- 
12 



H8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

not earn much money but do not save any that 
they do earn ; for, as I have shown in former papers, 
it is not those who earn the least who go through 
life the poorest. 

And probably it is that class of men among 
clergymen who think they are making sacrifices. 

I do not see any good reason why clergymen 
generally have not now about the same opportunity 
and the same obligation upon them to accumulate a 
reasonable competency as other people. 

This is not written in a spirit of fault-finding with 
ministers — any of them. I would that they all 
might be better paid than they are ; for there is no 
more essential trade or profession than theirs ; and 
nobody, beyond my own family, can have a firmer 
hold upon my sympathies than a faithful pastor. 
But what I do say is that the pecuniary dealings 
between preachers and people have become estab- 
lished on business principles ; and when the salary 
is paid the obligation is ended. It is a good thing 
to know when our debts are paid. 

While, as I have tried to show, all necessary and 
reasonable expenses of the churches should be 
cheerfully borne, not only as a duty, but as a pro- 
fitable investment, it is not to be disguised that 
there is a good deal of church begging that is not 
of that character, and more or less of which is not 
to be commended. As a single example — and the 
reader will meet many other phases of them as he 
goes along — when a silver-tongued canvasser comes 



BENEFACTIONS AND CHARITIES. H9 

along, boring the churches of his denomination for 
money to build a church, or any number of them, 
in some far-away field in the Master's vineyard, I 
cannot help thinking that in the matter of meeting 
houses, as with everything else, everybody ought 
to live within their means. People who are not 
able to build a sufficient house to worship in do 
not need any. In any community, ever so poor, 
if there are not enough people interested in the 
preaching of the gospel to erect as good a house to 
preach in as they occupy themselves, they can be 
sufficiently provided for in school houses or pri- 
vate houses. Fine churches are not essential to 
the spiritual success of church organizations, but 
rather the contrary. The older people can re- 
member how churches were planted, and how they 
flourished, in this part of the country without any 
fine buildings, and without any buildings, and with- 
out the continual din of church debts. I was once 
traveling on horseback in the wilds of West Vir- 
ginia, and halting one night at a small log cabin of 
one room on the ground floor, for a night's hospi- 
tality, I found the inmates preparing for a quarter- 
ly meeting of the circuit, of perhaps ten or fifteen 
charges, to be held at that house, Travel the thin- 
ly settled portions of that State to-day, and you 
will find, here and there, a log meeting-house, 
built, usually, by the joint labors of the whole com- 
munity where located, with but the merest trifle of 
money cost ; and this can be done wherever a 



180 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

church edifice is needed. And the Lord will meet 
the people in such a house just the same as in any 
other. 

And yet there is no objection to fine and costly 
churches if the people of the locality are able and 
willing to build them. What I do object to is the 
building of churches that they are not able and 
willing to pay for, and boring the community for 
an indefinite number of years with church debts, 
and the attempts to build churches at a distance, 
that the people of the localities do not need, or 
ought to build for themselves. In this matter all 
people can live within their means without detri- 
ment to the cause. 

After all that can be said in respect to donations 
to the multitudinous charitable enterprises that are 
always coming to us for aid, every one must be a 
law unto himself. One will approve one thing; 
another, another thing. This one general rule is 
always safe : Any enterprise that is calculated to 
make the world better should always receive en- 
couragement and support. 



XX. 

LAW AND LAWYERS. 

Every man is liable, some time in his life, to be 
compelled to go to law to protect himself and his 
property from spoliation by evil doers ; and so a 
little discourse on law and lawyers may not be in- 
appropriate in this series. 



LAW AND LAWYERS. 181 

In the first place it is safe enough to advise 
young men to start out in life with a determination 
never to go to law for mere sentiment, for mere 
feeling, for mere right, justice. Perhaps you can- 
not afford it. And I think it is true that most 
small matters of litigation cannot be afforded by 
the winning party. They cost him more than they 
come to. These questions should be settled in 
your own mind on business principles, and not on 
the principle of fight. Never go to law for the 
sake of beating somebody , if it is likely to cost you 
more than it comes to. Don't bite your own nose 
off. In every case of proposed litigation there are 
two questions for you to consider : 1st, is your 
case just? and 2nd, will it pay? In deciding the 
latter you must consider the probable chances of 
success, and the expense in money and time and 
fret that it will cost you if you win ; and if, on a 
fair comparison of these with the amount involved, 
there is a fair preponderance in your favor, then go 
to law ; if not, haul in your temper and make the 
best compromise you can, or let it all go. If peo- 
ple would act upon these principles a good deal of 
petty litigation and a good deal of bad neighbor- 
hood would be saved. 

In the matter of law and lawyers in general I 
think there is more or less of radical error extant, 
which I propose here to discuss. In so doing I 
shall not say that the common sentiment of the 
masses is that lawyers are entirely useless, that 



182 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

the profession is a fraud upon society, and that 
law itself and lawsuits only devices for a useless 
class of people to get their living out of the pro- 
ducing classes, but the current popular fashion of 
driving at law, lawsuits, and lawyers does imply, 
and I think the fact is, that there is a wide-spread 
sentiment in all communities that law itself is un- 
stable, unreliable, fluctuating, that lawsuits are 
evils per se, and that lawyers are non-producers, 
living upon the bounty of the producing classes, 
and everybody ought to have as little to do with 
them as possible, and the fewer of them in the 
world the better, and if none at all the world 
would be the better for it ; as if it were by their 
own ipse dixit that their work and their profits 
come. 

It is for the instruction and benefit of that class 
of croakers of law and lawyers, and to caution 
young men against their extravagant theories, that 
this discourse is made, and not for a vindication 
of the legal profession, as if they needed any de- 
fense for being lawyers. 

It is to be confessed that lawyers, and judges, and 
sheriffs, and all other court officers do not really 
produce any values, but are supported from the 
productions of other people. Instead of cul- 
tivating the soil, or fashioning any of the products 
of nature into intrinsic values — creating property 
out of nothing, their trade goes only to the distri- 
bution of the wealth created by others, and taking 



LAW AND LAWYERS. 183 

a share to themselves. An expensive litigation 
over a property, to determine who is the owner of 
it, does not enhance its value, but practically di- 
minishes some other property to the amount of fees 
paid to the lawyers and others. An estate is to be 
settled. The lawyer 's services do not increase the 
acres, or the amount of invested securities, or in- 
crease their productiveness, or make them better 
in any respect ; but he is sure to take a share to 
himself. And so of all other work of the lawyer. 

But we must go deeper than this. To understand 
thoroughly what lawyers are good for, we must not 
stop at the surface of things. "We must go down 
to the foundations of civilization. 

We used to hear a good deal about the Divine 
right of Kings: by which I suppose was meant 
that Kings were, by Divine appointment, invested 
with the power to rule the masses perpetually, in 
contra-distinction to the claim that the masses 
have any right to govern themselves, or any right 
to a voice in the selection of their rulers. I do not 
propose to discuss that question here ; in this 
country we decided that a hundred years ago. But 
I will say this : The Divine right of Kings to rule 
would be a very fine theory of government and the 
best and cheapest practical government that could 
be devised, if we only had a Divine race of Kings 
— a race of men devoid of the infirmities and the 
depravity of common mortals. With such a race 
for rulers, government would always be pure, just 



184 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

and perfect. Kings and all other rulers, however, 
being afflicted with the same infirmities and deprav- 
ity of other people — the same that makes govern- 
ment necessary for the protection of the weak against 
the rapacity of the stronger — a government vested 
in the hands of a particular class is pretty sure to 
be prostituted to the very purposes that its legiti- 
mate province is to prevent — rapacity and wrong. 
That is to say : the necessity of government arises 
from the tendency of people to plunder one another 
of the fruits of their labor ; and government is a 
mighty engine, capable of that same kind of plun- 
der, when a particular governmental class is recog- 
nized ; for the reason that government necessarily 
has unlimited power to reach into the pockets of 
the masses. And a governing class are pretty sure 
to appropriate the government to themselves as a 
property vested in them for their own benefit, in- 
stead of for the benefit of the governed, as by the 
true Divine theory. That there is a remedy for 
such governmental plunder, in republics, is exem- 
plified by the impeachment of New York Judges, 
and Tweed in prison. 

And so, to go down still deeper into fundamen- 
tal principles, were it not for human depravity, 
there would be no need of law or lawyers. But 
with this law : "In the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread," and the ten commandments, and 
other laws of God, came the necessity for human 
laws for the application and enforcement of those 



LAW AND LAWYERS. 185 

laws in human society. The statesman who said it 
was not necessary to re-enact the laws of God, was 
wofully mistaken. The re-enactment of the laws of 
God is substantially what human laws are for. 

" Thou shalt not kill." 

" Thou shalt not steal," etc., are re-enacted by 
all civilized countries. They must be. 

Human laws, then, being indispensable to the 
protection of individuals against the rapacity of 
others, in their persons and in their possessions, 
those laws are the very foundation and groundwork 
of the right of property — of property itself ; for 
without them there would be no possibility of 
property. 

Then to go a step further, there must be umpires, 
arbiters, courts to administer and enforce the laws 
There must be lawyers, for Courts must be made 
of lawyers ; and there must be practicing lawyers 
also, for without them there could be no adminis- 
tration of j ustice in any civilized or intelligible 
way. So that, on the whole, law and lawyers really 
constitute the basis of the social fabric. They are 
not secondary ; not a useful convenience merely ; 
they are a fundamental factor of civilization. On 
them the body politic largely rests. Every culti- 
vated acre, every habitation, every factory, every 
working mine, every public improvement, together 
with all their varied productions, and all invested 
capital, in every phase and manner of investment, 
all, all owe their value to law and lawyers. 



186 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

There is a great deal of croaking about the un 
certainties of the law. There is nothing positive 
in it ; all is doubtful and uncertain, for the benefit 
of the lawyers, we are told. It is said of the late 
Judge Grover that he gave this account of himself: 
When he first went into the Court of Appeals of 
the State of New York, he expected to find that 
court made up of very profound lawyers — men who 
knew every thing about the law, and could readily 
grasp all the points of every case and square them 
up to the science of law every time without any 
mistakes. But he soon found that the only differ- 
ence between that Court and inferior courts was 
that the Court of Appeals had the last guess upon 
the law, as he said. 

Suppose that all to be so ; what of it ? Let us 
see. That applies to litigated properties only. 
Nine hundred and ninetj^-nine men out of a thou- 
sand, hold their properties without question, be- 
cause the law is certain as to their property. Mr. 
Croaker, why is it that some stronger man than 
you does not drive }^ou from your house, or your 
farm, or take your cattle, or your crops, or your 
merchandise, or whatever else you are possessed 
of ? Because the law is certain. Why does not 
some rapacious neighbor go into Court to dispos- 
sess you of these properties ? Because the law is 
certain ; for the law applies to all property, and 
stands as a bulwark to shield it against all evil 
doers, and not merely applying to disputed cases. 



LAW AKD LAWYERS. 181 

We used to hear a good deal about a government 
of consent. There is no such thing as a govern- 
ment of consent. It it a solecism. Government 
is coercion. Law is coercion. The consent of the 
evil disposed is assured by the coercive power of 
the law. You hold your property undisputed be- 
cause this coercive power is sure to award it to 
you — because the certainty of the law is in it and 
all about it. 

But as a matter of course there is always uncer- 
tainty in litigated cases in court. If there were 
no uncertainty there would be no litigation ; for 
nobody would go to law with a certainty of losing 
his case. From the imperfections of humanity it 
is impossible that all the processes of trade, in all 
their ramifications, can be carried on without cases 
of disagreements as to fact and imperfections in 
the application of law, which necessarily lead to 
litigations. These disagreements and uncertainties 
are what make the litigation, and not the law that 
makes the uncertainties. 

And then, admitting the uncertainties of litiga- 
tion, in all courts from lowest to highest — uncer- 
tainties in the application of law to facts, and in the 
fine and difficult discriminations often involved in 
important cases, there is science in the law after all; 
it is not a jumble; not a guesswork, if Judge 
Grover did say so. In my explorations of law, in 
my own cases, for I am not a lawyer, I have found 
that in every case of any magnitude that comes 



188 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

before a Court, where any disputed question of 
law is involved , there is an underlying principle of 
law that reaches it, and should govern it, and will 
govern it in the hands of a competent well-inform- 
ed lawyer and an upright and competent judge. 

And in passing, I may as well say to the young 
members of the profession, seek out that governing 
principle in every case that comes to you, and you 
will be able to save many a client from unsuccess- 
ful litigation, and achieve more than an average of 
success in your profession. Prepare your cases 
well by exploring the law to the bottom, so as to 
be able to show to the Court all the merit that they 
admit of. The more you do this the easier it will 
be to do it. Such preparation of one case will, 
perhaps, prepare you for many others in future. 
When you commence practice, you are just ready 
to commence to learn the law. Work, therefore, 
is I think the principal secret of success. Great 
lawyers are always great workers. 

From what I have already said on this subject, 
the profession of the law is not a mere invention 
for the benefit of the lawyers, as many intelligent 
but superficial people seem to imagine. It is not a 
necessary evil. It is purely beneficial per se ; as 
much so as the trade of agriculture, or any other 
purely productive vocation. It may be said to be 
a contribution to the productions of all other 
classes. The support of the legal fraternity is not 
in any sense a drain upon the national wealth. The 



LAW AND LAWYERS. 189 

lawyers are just as well entitled to a share in all 
litigated properties as is the working man in the 
goods that he aids in manufacturing. And litiga- 
tions are just as necessary to the good order of 
society, yea to society and civilization themselves, 
as is the cultivation of the soil or the operations of 
the mechanical processes. 

As to going to law, probably there is too much 
of it. A good deal of it might be dispensed with 
if people would not stand so much on their " grit," 
and more of it if all lawyers were well qualified for 
their work, so as to avoid the bringing of desperate 
and really hopeless and unnecessary actions, or en- 
couraging desperate and hopeless defenses. Not 
that a lawyer must know positively the result of a 
suit before he begins— that, as we have seen, is im- 
possible ; but great numbers of suits are battled 
through, which, on one side or the other, a compe- 
tent lawyer, by exploring to the bottom, would 
know to be hopeless from the beginning. And 
then, furthermore, lawyers are made up of the same 
sort of humanity as other people. A few men get 
into the profession who have no right to be there. 
Without the moral principle in good faith to pur- 
sue the labors and the arts of the true lawyer, they 
disgrace the profession by all the sharp practices 
of shyster necromancy. These excresences upon 
an honorable profession are always ready to foster 
litigation, whether needful or not, provided only 
that they can get their hands into somebody's 
pocket — no matter whose. 



190 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

I think it is a commonly received opinion that 
the practice of law is necessarily more or less un- 
truthful, and dishonest. Of the two sides of every 
litigation, one side is wrong, and the lawyer on that 
side always exerts his skill and ingenuity to make 
it out to be right ; and all that is surely wrong; he 
cannot be an honest man to do that. Such is the 
theory of many superficial people. But that is 
begging the question. In litigation, the question 
of the right or wrong is what is to be tried, and 
each party is entitled to a full presentation of all 
that there is in the case in his favor, and in the 
best possible light. This is the lawyer's business 
to do. This is fair and honest. It is his bounded 
duty. With less than that, courts would be a farce. 
There would be no administration of justice. Be- 
yond this a lawyer is not bound to go, and the true 
lawyer will not. And this does not require any- 
thing false or disreputable. But the lower grade 
of so-called lawyers that I have described above, 
will stoop to anything — fraud, falsehood, any sort 
of chicanery or swindling to carry a case, or to get 
one ; and they care not who is cheated — whether 
client or others, so that they make a fe£. But I 
have good reason to know that there are true law- 
yers. In my numerous litigations, in several 
States, I have found them ; and have not had the 
misfortune to employ any of the other kind. 

We hear a good deal of clamor about lawyers' 
fees. Sometimes it so happens that a lawyer gets 
large pay for little work, and that, perhaps, of an 



LAW AND LAWYERS. 191 

ordinary kind. It is the price ; the law gives it to 
him. It is an incident of his business, a profit- 
able job, perhaps, just as the merchant makes a hit 
in an honest trade, whereby he makes a hundred 
dollars in an hour ; or as any other business man 
makes a few hundred with very little exertion. 
With the exception of the class of lawyers above 
described, whose highest conceptions of the pro- 
vince of the lawyer is that it is to get fees, and 
whose aim always is to make fees whether necessary 
or not, I think it cannot be claimed that lawyers 
make too much money. 

A Court in session is one of the grandest spec- 
tacles in civilized society. Look in upon it. — . 
Sovereignty of the people embodied. The power 
of a state determining rights of property — liberty 
— life. Look upon its work. The case may be a 
trifling one. The parties may be foolish to take 
it there. It may cost the county more than the 
sum involved. But there is a wrong on one side 
or the other that it is the province of government 
to redress. There is a right of property involved 
that the parties have the same right to carry there, 
and society is just as deeply interested that the 
wrong shall be righted, as if a million were at stake. 
The trial of that little suit is a part of the price of 
good order and civilization, just as is that of every 
one, large or small, that parties choose to litigate. 
Society cannot afford to ignore the rights, however 
small of any individual, however humble. If it is 



192 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

costly to care for them, it is more so to omit it 
Intruders may come upon our borders, as they do 
sometimes, and plunder our people of a few hun- 
dred cattle. For the time being it may be cheaper 
to furnish cattle to replace the stolen, than to send 
an army to stop it. But to begin that process is 
to invite a repetition and multiplication of the 
plunder to an indefinite extent ; and the only safety 
is in immediate redress at any cost. And so with 
legal litigations. It is the boast of the law that 
there is no wrong without a remedy, and the State 
cannot afford to ignore the slightest wrong. As I 
have said, the party may better afford to waive his 
rights than to prosecute them, but the State must 
enforce them if required, or her dignity and power 
cease, and the government is a failure. 

Judicial prerogative, and the lawyer's office — the 
grandest province of humanity in respect to human 
rights. A vast interest, peradventure, to be adju- 
dicated in a Court. A lawyer on either side, hold- 
ing up his client's case, in the best of its aspects. 
One seems to have the better of it, and he 
wields all his advantages of law upon his antago- 
nist, and holds him in the well-woven net-work of 
his case; the judge decides the controversy; the 
end is reached ; vast property is handed over, this 
way or that, by the fiat of a man ; the chapter is 
ended. Yes, it is grand. It is a fearful power in 
human hands, as it respects the immediate parties, 
but it must be so. The decision may be wrong, for 



TONGUE. 193 

this is only to say that judges are men. It may be 
wrong in principle, wrong in law, but right never- 
theless, in the larger political sense, for there must 
be an end of property strife somewhere. The last 
end of a judicial controversy must be taken for the 
right. It is the law of the case ; it is the legal 
right. 

In conclusion, the true lawyer is a fundamental 
factor of civilization, the conservator of all prop- 
erty rights, and of the peace and good order of 
societ}^ Let him appreciate the dignity, power and 
responsibility of his office, and seek to maintain its 
integrity and honor. The false lawyer is the con- 
trary of all that : the fomentor of strifes and liti- 
gations, a mere schemer for business — fees — self; 
an excresence upon society ; deserving of all the 
opprobrium that is sometimes heaped upon the pro- 
fession in general, and more ; of no possible bene- 
ficial use in the world ; inviting the scorn and de«* 
testation of all honest men. 



XXI. 

TONGUE. 

Some people go through the world at a disad* 
vantage for the want of a sufficient fluency of 
speech ; but I think there are more who are troubled 
with too much volubility of tongue. Not that any 
degree of fluency, and ease, and oratory in the ex- 
pression of ideas can ever be unacceptable ; for 
such is one of the grandest and most attractive 
13 



194 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

faculties of man. But the trouble is the talk 
without the ideas, or too small a proportion of 
ideas to the quantity of talk. 

If a person has anything to saj r , it is a good 
thing to know how to say it, but it is a better 
thing to know how to stop when he gets through, 
and still better to know how to say it without any 
surplus of talk. And ttiis will hold good in any 
kind of public speaking, in business, or in ordin- 
ary conversation. Of course all that is a big 
thing to know, and very few can know it to any 
degree of perfection. But I think there are some 
general principles that may be hinted at here that 
may be useful to young people ; for the world is 
suffering of too much talk. 

I have seen many a lawyer tire a jury and dam- 
age his case by a too elaborate threading out of 
unimportant and fine-spun theories and arguments ; 
as if his success depended upon the length of his 
speech. I do not say that a short speech will al- 
ways do, or that the shortest is always the best ; 
for a certain amount of talk is usually necessary, 
longer or shorter, according to the nature of the 
case. A five hours' speech may be shorter for one 
case than one hour's would be for another. What 
I do urge is that by seizing upon the prominent 
features of a case, and setting them out with stud- 
ied conciseness and perspicuity, a lawyer will usu- 
ally do better with a jury or a court than by a re- 
dundancy of words. All young lawyers may pro- 



TONGUE. 195 

fit by studying the art of condensation and terse- 
ness. I have heard of discourses so put together 
and applied to the subject that " every word was 
a sledge hammer. " And that is the kind of talk 
that all young public speakers should aim for. I 
think it is done only by grasping the gist of the 
subject and presenting it with plainness of diction 
and condensation. 

In printed talk, too, I think there is great waste 
of words. In the productions of many popular 
writers we see a good deal of fine writing about 
nothing. When they undertake to discuss any 
subject they have more to say all around the edges 
of it than upon the vital matter in hand, all of 
which is some times quite readable if the reader 
has nothing else to do ; but to a busy man I think 
it is a good deal of a bore to endure so much em- 
bellishment for a little substance ; to search through 
so much ornamental chaff for the kernel of the 
subject. I often tire of wading through the mazes 
of elegant diction, to find the merits of a subject 
that ought to be embodied in a quarter of the 
space that is taken up. 

In writing on any topic, for busy men to read, 
the very best way is to pitch right into the merits 
without any circumlocution, go through it without 
surplusage or trimmings, and stop when through. 
This, too, is a good deal of a trade to learn ; but 
it is the true art of the really fine writer, that 
every young aspirant should aim for. 



196 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

And then there is the abuse of talk in the way 
of gossip — mischievous, news-bearing, from one to 
another, from the mere unimportant tattle to ac- 
tual slander, which should be studiously avoided. 
It is always damaging to somebody and never use- 
ful to any one. I do not say that we should say 
nothing about our neighbors, for this would be 
not only impossible but undesirable. It would 
pretty nearly shut us out of all sociability. But I 
think there is a general rule that may easily be 
observed, and that would be the better for every- 
body ; and that is, simply, to not report or repeat 
anything disparaging of another, true or false, 
with these exceptions : 

1st. Where it is for the ends of public justice 
that it should be told. 

2nd. Where a matter is under judicial process ; 
and 

3d. Where any person is being injured in reputa- 
tion or otherwise, by talk or otherwise, by another. 
In this last case I think it is the special duty of 
any person to inform the injured party. That is to 
say: Suppose A and B to be in ostensible friendly 
relations, socially or otherwise; but B is doing 
something by talk or otherwise inj urious to A in 
his good name, or his business ; A is treating B as 
his friend ; I think it quite clear that A has a right 
to know of B's conduct, and it is the imperative 
duty of any other person knowing it to inform A 
of it, so that he may not longer be deceived and 



TONGUE. 19T 

cheated. To keep it from A is to do him an injus- 
tice ; to tell it is not doing B any wrong or injury- 
only so far as it may be an injury to be cut off from 
cheating. 

I think these garrulous people often injure them- 
selves by their propensity to talk. They are always 
so hungry for talk that the supply of gossip of 
others does not suffice, and so they peddle every- 
thing they know about themselves. They cannot 
have any matter or scheme of business without 
telling all about it to everybody they come in con- 
tact with, and thereby often get supplanted or in- 
jured. If they happen to have a lawsuit, they con- 
tinually talk, talk about it to everybody they see, 
revealing all the secrets of it, and sometimes get 
beaten by their own imprudent talk. Reader, it is 
always safe to make your talk about yourself as 
small as possible. 

But the most extensive grievance of all, in the 
way of talk, is in business ; or rather, around the 
edges of business. The most of men never know 
when any little piece of business talk is done. For 
instance : one of that kind calls on a business man 
on business; and in stating his case he cannot 
do without telling the whole history of him- 
self and his family and all of his neighbors. Or 
if that is stating it too strongly, perhaps he 
will pitch straight into the subject, and tell all he 
knows about it, with the most elaborate particu- 
larity, through all its labyrinths, three or four times, 



198 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

over, together with everything that every other 
person that has had to do with it has ever said or 
done about it. And then, if he ever does get 
choked off from that, he cannot think of retiring 
without an elaborate talk on matters and things in 
general that somehow seem to be suggested to him 
by that business. These two phases of that nuis- 
ance, in various degrees of intensity, embody the 
principal substance of this kind of superfluous 
talk. 

A little case in point. Not many days prior to 
the present writing, I was trying to write one of 
these little chapters. A man called on me for a 
matter of business that ought to be done in about 
fifteen minutes. Before I could shake him off 
without rudeness I wasted about two hours. Then, 
another call of the like character used up the en- 
tire half day 

Sometimes an acquaintance, having nothing to 
do — waiting for a train or something — will call on 
a business man who wants to be at his work, and 
entertains him with a couple of hours or so of talk. 
An editorial friend has just now had such an en- 
tertainment, and they are quite too common with all 
business men. These examples are given as merely 
illustrative of what all business men are more or 
less afflicted with all the time. 

Reader, learn to avoid all such unnecessary talk; 
when you call on a business man on business, make 
your discourse directly t6 the business in hand, 



HOSPITALITY. 199 

and when yon get through with that don't forget 
that he does not want to be entertained with any 
thing else in business hours. He wants to do his 
work. 



XXII. 

HOSPITALITY. 

I think young people commencing to keep house 
can and ought to improve upon the current ideas 
of entertaining visitors. My observation leads me 
to doubt whether there is much of the old-fashion- 
ed, comfortable, enjoyable hospitality left. It is 
overdone and underdone. The fashion is to over- 
do it so much, when undertaken at all, that it ex- 
tinguishes nearly everything in that line. People 
cannot afford it. They cannot do it. It is too 
severe a burden for the average housekeeper to un- 
dertake unless under a great pressure. It is a big 
job to take a visitor or two for a day or two. It 
ought not to be so ; there is no need of it. 

Go into almost any house where the mistress of it 
is a good housekeeper, a few days before visitors are 
expected, and you will find a hurly-burly of prepa- 
ration ; the house, perhaps, overhauled from cellar 
to garret ; the culinary department in a distressing 
tumult ; as if the visitors were so superior to their 
entertainers that nothing but such a strain as that 
could render their visit endurable ; and in general 
the aspect of affairs so uncomfortable that all in 
their hearts wish the visit was over with, instead 



200 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

of looking forward to it as a pleasure, as should be 
the case; for the entertainers are just as well enti- 
tled to enjoyment in the visit as are the visitors. 
And when the auspicious day arrives, and the 
company are on hand, the household are so tired 
out and so surfeited with the agitations of the sub- 
ject, that the whole thing is a bore ; the visit that 
might be a pleasure is really a burden and a griev- 
ance. All this by over-kindness — overdoing the 
matter of hospitality. By these extraordinary ef- 
forts to make the visit pleasant and enjoyable the 
mark is so overreached that the enjojanent of real 
free, familiar, social intercourse is extinguished. 

Of course that process of preparation for guests 
cannot be endured very often ; for it may as well 
be confessed, for everybody, that they do not like 
to do it. And it is well understood by all that no- 
body likes to do it. And nobody can think of vis- 
iting the nearest friends at a distance without first 
ascertaining if it will be agreeable to them ; in 
plainer words, if they can endure it. The tendency 
is to do just as" little of it as possible ; and on pub- 
lic, religious, or other occasions, where visitors 
ought to be cared for by free hospitality, such en- 
tertainment is very difficult to get. Not long ago, 
a meeting of a religious body of forty members was 
held, in a village of five thousand inhabitants. 
Notice was given out a week before the day of 
meeting for volunteers for boarders for two days. 
During the week the pastor received reports from 



HOSPITALITY. 201 

two persons — one that none could be taken ; the 
other offering to take two; that was all. And 
then it was by importunity that entertainment was 
secured for that little gathering without going to 
the hotels. 

Another case : On invitation of the prominent 
temperance people of a large village, a Temperance 
Convention was called at said village. Accommo- 
dations were asked for fifty or sixty for a night and 
part of two days. This, of all benevolent gather- 
ings, ought to be taken care of without charge, for 
it is well known that the mass of temperance work- 
ers have to work for nothing and pay their own ex- 
penses. From a sharp lady canvasser I have a 
fund of valuable information on this subject. But 
not to divulge details, the subject was very gener- 
ally repulsive to those whose ability and sympa- 
thies with the work would naturally suggest that 
the doors would be opened. All sorts of excuses 
were interposed — of course some were good and 
valid, but probably not more than one in ten of 
those who had no real hindrance could be induced 
to accept a single guest ; and many who did so did 
it w r ith the greatest reluctance. 

I do not speak of these facts and these tenden- 
cies to complain of the results of the prevailing 
fashion, but to complain of the fashion itself. Hos- 
pitality is pretty much played out. It ought to be 
— i. e., the kind that I have tried to describe. It 
is too repulsive to the average housekeeper, and too 



202 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

costty — in labor and in money. People cannot af- 
ford it. When a brother writes to a brother that 
about a month hence he proposes a visit by himself 
and family for two or three weeks, "if agreeable^ 
that means a month's labor and expense in money 
and a commotion for the two or three weeks' visit 
that often sends back the answer that it will not be 
agreeable, or it will be for special reasons incon- 
venient ; when the fact is that the visit would be 
extremely agreeable and not at all inconvenient but 
for the fashion aforesaid. And in many cases 
where the "agreeable" reply is given, it ought to be 
the other way, because the labor and expense can- 
not really be afforded. In most of such cases the 
fault is in the host and hostess themselves, for the 
visitors would prefer to not inflict such a strain 
upon the family, but knowing that the friends 
would be horrified with such visit without such 
great preparation, the notice is given as before 
stated. And when entertainment is asked for any 
benevolent meeting, the call is supposed to involve 
a feast of fat things, and other incidental labors 
that not many can very well endure. 

It is all wrong. There is no need of overdoing 
this matter of entertainment. And by not over- 
doing it we can do the more of it ; and then there 
would be no trouble in entertaining a few friends 
on any suitable occasion. And then it would be 
quite easy, in any good sized town, to care for any 
large gathering whenever necessary and proper. 



HOSPITALITY. 203 

Hospitality can and should be enjoyable on both 
sides, and not a source of distress to the entertain- 
ers which often creates great uneasiness, not to say 
discomfort to the guests. 

Reader, if your brother and his family, or other 
relatives, are to make you a visit, remember that 
you are exactly as much related to them as they 
are to you , and there is no reason why you and 
your family should take upon yourselves a burden 
for their entertainment that you cannot really af- 
ford, and that will spoil all of your side of the 
visit, even if they should desire you to do so, which 
in nine cases out of ten they would not. They 
have no right to any such thing. It is not just and 
mutual social intercourse. If you are to take a 
stranger for a day or two, he is no better than you 
and your family — or if he is, he has no business 
there — and there is no reason for straining to make 
a great feast for him, and he has no right to expect 
any extra preparations that will disturb the equa- 
nimity of the family or make them in any way un- 
comfortable. If I am invited by an acquaintance 
to dinner, casually, for my accommodation, that 
should not involve an overhauling of the dining 
room, any inconvenient change of food or extra 
work. If the dinner happens to be very plain or 
common-place, I have no right to complain of it, 
and I do not see why the lady of the. house should 
be at all embarrassed. And there is no reason why 
my friend should incur an expense of a dollar or 



204 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

"so to reconstruct a dinner to save me a half dollar 
at a hotel. If I am invited to a free entertainment 
for a few days, and I am given such fare as the 
family usually have themselves, the probability is 
that it is as good as I have at home, and surely 
that ought to be satisfactory to me. If not it is 
my privilege to buy something better and pay 
for it. This matter is usually treated as if every- 
body else are better than ourselves, and our way of 
living is not fit for any body else. 

But all this is not to say that visitors do not 
necessarily make some extra work and expense, 01 
that reasonable preparation should not be made so 
as to make them comfortable. Less than that 
would be an inexcusable insult. All that I com- 
plain of is the superfluous, unnecessary strain, that 
is usually the biggest end of the preparation, and 
that in nine cases out of ten the guests would much 
prefer should not be done. 

But "such slip-shod hospitality is not showing a 
proper respect to guests," some will say. Yery 
well, let us see. The respect should be reciprocal. 
One side is entitled to about the same respect as the 
other. The respect due to the guest is that he 
have a comfortable and respectable entertainment, 
and that due to the entertainers is that they be not 
subjected to inordinate burdens on account of their 
hospitality. Each has rights that the other ought 
to respect. The pleasures of social intercourse 
should be mutual — can be mutual — enjoyable by 



HOSPITALITY. 205 

both sides, and not merely enjoyed by one side 
and endured by the other. 

After all, I hear some people say that "most of 
this matter of free entertainment is a bore any how. 
On these public occasions, such as Religious Con- 
ferences, Presbyteries, Associations, Temperance 
Conventions, etc., let the delegates provide for 
themselves at hotels." 

Well, if these gatherings are to be treated as 
matters of mere money making business for the 
members, like Bankers' or Manufacturers' Conven- 
tions, and the like, then that is very well. But if 
we treat such institutions as benevolent organiza- 
tions, for the general benefit of the world, that 
alters the case quite materially. It resolves itself 
into a question of the expediency of such meet- 
ings and of paying their expenses some how. The 
world needs these benevolent bodies, and they are 
not primarily for the benefit of their members, 
and their meetings must be supported somehow by 
their patrons. And I think the best way and the 
cheapest way to do it is by voluntary entertain- 
ment. 

And more than this : I think the object of all 
such benevolent organizations is always consider- 
ably promoted by social intercourse of the officials 
with the people at their homes, at such meetings. 
It cultivates interest in the work that cannot be 
done in any other way. Think of a Conference of 
three hundred ministers of the Gospel spread 



206 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 

through the masses of people of a town or city, in 
social converse at their homes, instead of coldly 
plodding along, at hotels, as if this world were for 
nothing but mere selfish mone}^ getting. "What a 
vast fund of valuable information, with its impetus 
for progress, must remain in such a community. 
And so of all other high-toned benevolent bodies. 
And this is not all. If we can get rid of the use- 
less family strain of hospitality before alluded to, 
I think the care of such public bodies can be made 
enjoyable all round. I think I am not extremely 
social in my disposition, but it is usually pleasant 
to me to entertain a few guests on such occasions, 
and some of my most interesting acquaintances 
have been formed in this way. 



XXIII. 

CONCLUSION. 

In these twenty-two little discourses I have tried 
to impart to young people, from the experience and 
observation of a laborious life, such instruction as 
seemed to me, if accepted, would make the world the 
better. In discussing the property interests of the 
masses, I have endeavored to inculcate the princi- 
ples of practical Christian piety as a necessary 
factor in the make-up of a man for success in life. 
But I cannot bid adieu to my readers, in this con- 
nection, without an exhortation to accept the 
Christian religion from the better motive of the 
higher life, and not merely for dollars and cents. 



CONCLUSION. 207 

Drink it in spiritually, experimentally, in all its 
length and breadth, and not stop with the cold and 
passive theory, and the money profit of it. Em- 
brace it for its spiritual consolations here, and for 
its assurances for the future life, and not merely 
accept its secular advantages and reject the higher. 
To this end you must accept Christ as your Savior, 
put your trust in Him, confess Him before men, do 
your life work in His name, and in subordination 
to the requirements of His Gospel. And now, 
commending you to His grace, mercy and peace, 
and in the hope that the object of these papers may 
not be entirely unattained, I close this series. 



PABT SECOND. 
ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

1 . — INTRODUCTORY. 

In all the range of activities, and principles, and 
habits, that all people, young and old, have to 
face, and consider, and act upon, one way or the 
other, all through life, there is nothing more vitally 
important to every man, woman and child, than 
the subject of temperance. 

On the mere question of indulging in the use 
of alcoholic beverages, I have already given my 
views, to which I have nothing to add in these 
pages ; but intimately connected with that, there 
is a phase of the temperance question that has 
not yet been generally discussed, but is now com- 
ing to the front as an important factor in the 
temperance work ; to wit : alcoholic medication. 

To all deep thinkers in the temperance cause it 
is now well understood that the use of alcohol as 
medicine is an important agency in the propaga- 
tion of the drink habit — that a large portion of the 
intemperance in the land originates in the use of 
the article as medicine. And whether alcohol is 
good for sick people or not, there can be no doubt 
that the sale of it in the name of medicine is doing 
immensely more harm than good. 

A child trained by the family physician to the 

idea that alcoholic stimulants are necessary in 
(208) 



INTRODUCTORY. 209 

sickness, does not have very far to go to conclude 
that they are good for well people too. 

And when we look over the field of battle be- 
tween temperance and intemperance, I don't know 
for certain which is the more formidable enemy of 
the temperance cause, the hotels and saloons, or 
the doctors and drug shops. We have many tem- 
perance doctors, but I think they are no improve- 
ment upon the other kind in respect to alcoholic 
prescriptions. There are very few cases of disease 
that the regular allopathic practitioner can think 
of attending without more or less of such prescrip- 
tions ; and in a variety of cases alcoholic stimu- 
lants are the chief reliance. 

" Get a little brandy, good brandy ; go to the 
drug store for it, they keep a good article, especi- 
ally for medicine : put so and so in it, and take two 
or three spoonfuls three times a day ; it will build 
you up ; you need stimulating." 

Or, "get a keg of the best beer, and take three 
or four glasses a day. It is nourishing as well as 
stimulating, and that is just what you need." 

And so in a hundred ways the great elixir of 
life, as they would have us think it is, is drawn 
upon by the profession, day by day ; and the peo- 
ple are educated to the idea that it is good for 
everybody when they do not feel well. And the 
people make their own prescriptions in most of 
common cases of not teeling well 

The drug stores keep a good supply of " pure 
14 



210 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

liquors — for medical purposes only." To get a 
bottle filled there is not tippling. When the bot- 
tle is out the patient again feels not very well. 
And so probably more than half of the drinking 
customs of society are propagated and cultivated by 
the use of the article as a medicine. 

But after all, the question is whether alcohol is 
ever good for sick people. To this chiefly I pro- 
pose to address myself in these papers. 

I do not cast any reflections upon temperance 
doctors. They are conscientious and true to their 
convictions in this matter. But they are mistaken 
at one end or the other of this question. I think 
an alcohol-prescribing doctor cannot consistently 
be a temperance man. If alcoholic stimulation is 
good to build up exhausted nature in a sick man, 
it is good to build up an exhausted well man. If 
there is any vitalizing power in it, it is good for 
everybody ; and the temperance ideas of the pres- 
ent day are all wrong. But I think I know what 
I am saying, when I say that alcoholic stimulation 
is never useful to sick or well. It never increases, 
but always exhausts the vital forces — always tends 
to kill and never to cure. And I think no physic- 
ian can give an intelligible or physiological reason 
for prescribing it. 

I am aware that all this will be deemed fanatical 
by the generality of readers, but I shall try to pro- 
duce good scientific and practical proof of it before 
I get through. 



ITS TENDENCY ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES. 211 

IL 

ITS TENDENCY — ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES. 

THE DRUG SHOPS. 

The meanest of all our institutions that the law 
has provided, and that temperance men and Chris- 
tians are voting every year to perpetuate, for the 
propagation and cultivation of intemperance and 
debauchery, are the drug store grog-shops. The 
other sort do not pretend to any benefit or value in 
their goods, but generally admit that they grasp 
the money of their victims for what is worse than 
useless, and that their business tends only to de- 
bauchery and crime. The drug store grog-shop is 
founded on a relic of barbarism — the popular de- 
lusion, perpetuated by the doctors, that alcoholic 
stimulants are good for sick people. They think 
that the sick cannot get well without them, just as 
all the world once thought that people could not 
endure any severe labor, or any hardship, or ex- 
posure, without them. Professedly for the purpose 
of supplying afflicted humanity with this cure-all, 
the druggist obtains his license, and he is thus re- 
lieved of the odium that attaches to the common 
vulgar liquor dealer. 

Large and general as is the demand for these 
goods by orders of the doctors, this is but a trifling 
part of the trade. Theirs are charmed liquors. 
They are for medical purposes only. They are ab- 
solutely pure. They are good. They are to do 



212 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

sick people good. The doctor had prescribed them 
for his patient. The patient got well in spite of 
the prescription. The medicine is pleasant to take, 
and it has the credit of a cure. Afterwards the 
same patient takes to feeling not very well. 
What's the use of paying a dollar for a prescrip- 
tion. He can go for the cure-all just as well 
without it. About a quart of the best, with some 
orange peel or quassia in it will do the job. He is 
a reputable citizen ; he is sick ; the druggist is 
anxious to relieve him ; his liquors are of the very 
best : for medicine only ; he makes three or four 
times on them ; and the customer is cured for a 
very little while — so long as the medicine lasts — 
and then the same over again, and again, until he 
becomes an open undisguised drinker anywhere. In 
this way I think thousands of people are all the 
time on the road to drunkenness. 

Another way : A convalescent having exhausted 
his doctor's stimulant prescription, he feels a 
" goneness," without something to brace him up; 
or any other person who feels such goneness, goes 
to the drug store for the bracing up then and 
there. The dispenser of medicines, ministering to 
the needs of suffering humanity, and not to the de- 
pravity of human nature as with the common 
liquor seller, and seeing a good twenty-five cent 
piece for what costs him three or four cents, is 
quite easily persuaded that a little drink of the 
purest and best is good for the customer ; and so 



ITS TENDENCY — ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES. 213 

a nice little back room sees a very good run of 
that kind of custom. And then the proprietor 
soon becomes convinced that his pure liquors are 
good for every body ; and any one, money in hand, 
can get a drink, for the health, at any time. 

I do not say that all drug stores are that kind 
of grog shops, but I think they are not very un- 
common. 

THE DOCTORS. 

Now a word to the doctors. Whenever and 
wherever the practice of anti-alcoholic medication 
is advocated by any respectable authority, the 
alcoholic practitioners usually take it in a bellige- 
rent way. They may as well keep cool. It is not for 
us to educate them. But in view of the notorious 
and enormous propagation of the drink habit by 
alcoholic medication, it stands them in hand to 
study out this matter for themselves, and see if 
those members of the profession who deny the 
efficacy of alcohol as a remedial agent, may not be 
correct, and the majority wrong, as the entire pro- 
fession has many a time been wrong in vital mat- 
ters of practice ; for this doctrine of anti-alcohol 
in medication is not an invention of mine, and it 
is not very new. And this study is especially 
worthy of their attention in view of the fact that 
there is not to be found in their books any specific 
therapeutic theory, as to how alcoholic poison 
operates to cure disease. If it does cure, there 
must be a particular elementary action upon^the 



214 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

vital forces, somehow, by which the cure is effected. 
Let these knowing sprigs of Esculapius study out 
this problem and publish the result to the world, 
so that the profession may not longer grope in the 
dark, and continue to poison people with alcohol 
merely because their books tell them to, without 
knowing whether they need poisoning or not. 

And then, further, failing to discover any good 
reason for the alcoholic practice, when they say to 
a rigorous temperance patient that he must take 
alcohol or die, and he does not take it and does not 
die, as is not at all uncommon, it stands them in 
hand to stop and think whether the other side is not 
in the right after all, and whether those desperate 
cases that survive alcoholic medication do not get 
through in spite of it, instead of by virtue of it. 

It is high time for the medical profession, as con- 
servators of the public health, to reconsider this 
matter, go down to elementary principles, and do a 
little thinking for themselves, instead of following 
the practice of darker days merely because some 
distinguished writers keep it along in the books. 

And in these papers I shall try to present such 
common sense theories, and sustain them by such 
preponderating authorities of medical science, that 
the majority of doctors may profit by a careful 
study of them. 

THE THEORY. 

I think this question of alcoholic medication is a 



ITS TENDENCY — ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES. 215 

simple one, and easily understood by anybody who 
has a very slight knowledge of physiology. 

Without here undertaking to describe the 
physiological processes of a living human body, it 
is sufficient to say that life and health is the con- 
stant renewing of the continual waste of tissue, or 
elementary substance of the body, by the process 
of assimilation — nutrition — the appropriation of 
the usable particles of the food, to supply the 
waste aforesaid ; together with depuration or ex- 
cretion of the effete or wasted matter through the 
various emunctories or outlets of the body. These 
processes in perfection constitute perfect health — 
the maximum of vitality. Any interruption to 
them in any respect, in any part of the body, is 
disease of some kind — a loss of vitality. Their 
entire suspension is the extinction of all vitality — 
death. 

Now, I think alcohol is administered to the sick, 
chiefly, if not entirely, in cases of exhaustion — low 
vitality. For instance : in fever, where the vitality 
has been nearly all wasted by the disease — the 
patient nearly dead — alcohol is given to recuperate 
the system from the waste of vitality that has been 
going on without the physiological renewal, accel- 
erated as it has been by the poison of the disease. 
And in multitudes of cases, of the same character 
as to this particular phase, and of varying inten- 
sity, I think this drug is uniformly relied on by 
the most of allopathic practitioners. 



216 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

I believe it is admitted by the profession that 
alcohol is a powerfully irritant, caustic poison. 
Now put that and that together, and tell me how 
alcohol is to restore the wasted vitality. Vitality 
is produced by nutrition only. Instead of nutri- 
ent material 3^011 introduce poison into the body of 
the almost d}dng patient. It cannot be assimi- 
lated, cannot be converted into tissue to supply 
the indispensable want of life ; but on the contrary, 
when any poison, especially alcohol, is introduced 
into the human body, all the vital forces are at 
once brought into action to expel the intruder. 
And when this is effected, as it will be if sufficient 
organic power remains in the patient's system for 
self-defense, the alcohol will be expelled, leaving 
no beneficial result behind ; the patient remains as 
before, minus the vitality expended by the violent 
action of nature's scanty forces in expelling the 
enemy of all life. 

There is only one way to build up the wasted 
tissues ; only one way to renew the strength ; and 
that is by alimentation. Poison cannot do it. Its 
apparent effects are illusory. It is the rousing up 
of all the remaining life forces, but is not an addi- 
tion to them. It is the exhaustion of them in do- 
ing a work that the doctor should not make neces- 
sary. Who has not seen patients alcoholized — not 
to say drunken — to keep them up, as they call it ; 
all the vital forces kept on a strain of activity, un- 
til extinguished, oftener, perhaps, by such strain 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 211 

than by the original disease, and life going out 
without a moment's warning. 

Temperance men and women, such is the effect 
of alcoholic medication, in any form, upon the de- 
bilitated human body. You can see for yourselves 
that it neyer can be useful, but is always injurious 
— dangerous. And when your doctor tells you to 
use it, don't do it. When he tells you that you 
will die, or your friend will die, if it is not adminis- 
tered, tell him that it can only help to kill. And 
with this peremptory instruction the doctors will 
soon be in a way of learning the true philosophy in 
this behalf. , 



III. 

SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 

I remember very well when it was just as fana- 
tical to say that alcohol was not good for people 
in health to take— that people could safely endure 
severe labor, or any kind of physical exposure, 
without alcoholic drinks, as it is now to say that 
sick people can get well without them, or even that 
they are much more likely to get well without than 
with them. 

But that old fight is over. Xobody, now, save 
here and there a fossil tippler, pretends that alco- 
hol is good to put into a human stomach except as 
medicine. I think a large majority of drinking 
men admit that it is bad for them. And now the 
true temperance platform is anti-alcoholic medica- 



218 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

tion. The only way to stop the propagation of 
intemperance is to stop the use of alcohol as medi- 
cine. 

But when it is intimated that sick people can do 
without alcohol, the doctors rave, and the people 
— temperance people as well as others — stand 
aghast. And yet to those who have critically 
studied into the subject, outside of professional 
prejudice, and beyond professional power, it is 
really mournful and distressing to see the multi- 
tudes of people who are all the time being slaught- 
ered by alcoholic medication. 

I have already given the true theory of the 
effects of alcohol upon the living human body, by 
which it appears that this poison must necessarily 
always be injurious and dangerous to the sick ; but 
this matter does not rest on any theory or argu- 
ment of mine. And I now introduce some of the 
highest medical and scientific authorities in sup- 
port of my position. 

"Alcohol cannot supply anything which is essential 
to the due nutrition of the tissues. — W. B, Carpenter. 
M.D. 

" Alcohol is a poison to our organization. It is never 
digested and converted into nourishment. — Dr. Mur- 
ray. 

u Beer, wine, spirits, etc., furnish no element capa- 
ble of entering into the composition of blood, muscu- 
lar fibre, or any part which is the seat of the vital 
principle . — Liebig. 

" A small quantity of pure alcohol injected into the 
veins of an animal causes immediate death. The 
poison having been absorbed, carried to the heart, and 
propelled to the brain, the nervous centres become 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 219 

paralyzed, and the heart ceases to beat. — Prof. Mon- 
roe, M. D. 

" The use of alcoholic drinks diminishes man's 
capacity to endure both mental and physical labor, in- 
creases his predisposition to disease and shortens the 
average duration of life. — Jtf.S. Davis, M. D. 

PARKER. 

Prof. Willard Parker, of the New York College 
of Physicians and Surgeons, says: 

" Distilled liquor, I will use that term for the greater 
clearness, is never, under any circumstances, a food. 
It adds nothing to the substance of the body. It is 
never digested. It adds nothing to the forces of the 
body. On the contrary, it weakens force. It acts as 
an irritant; and so diminishes force by compelling the 
body to put forth efforts in order to get rid ot the in- 
truder. The effect is the same as that produced on the 
eye by the presence of a grain of sand. The eye is 
excited to a state of great activity to cast the intruder 
out ; but its real force as an eye is not increased ; it is 
weakened by the unnatural exertion. 

" Nor is distilled liquor a fuel. It is not burned ; if 
it were we should find the ashes, and of the ashes no 
trace is found. 
# * * * * * *#■ 

"It is true that a dose of alcohol will sometimes 
produce a sudden external glow, but it does not add to 
the real warmth of the body. This fictitious glow is 
thus produced : Alcohol introduced into the body as a 
foreign substance acts, as I have previously explained, 
as an irritant in the manner in which a grain of sand 
acts upon the eye. The nerves of the stomach, and of 
the heart, and of all the vital organs are thrown into 
». state of excitement ; the alcohol is passed directly 
undigested into the body ; the blood hurries to get rid 
of the intruder ; the rapidity of the circulation is in- 
creased, and the warm blood of the heart is thus hur- 
ried too speedily to the surface where it cools off. But 
no additional fuel has been furnished to the body to 
supply the heat thus exhausted; the temperature of 
the body has on the contrary been unnaturally lowered, 
and the vital organs have been overworked in the 



220 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

process. This has been proven both at home and 
abroad by frequent experiments. 

" Alcohol adds neither food, force nor fuel to the 
human frame ; what does it do ? 

u It has been ascertained by a distinguished savant 
at St. Petersburg, that alcohol taken into the stomach 
passes into the blood, in one minute and a half, undi- 
gested. It acts there disastrously upon the blood cor- 
puscles. These are the little cars freighted with oxygen 
and constituting the beginnings of life. The alcohol 
impairs their vitality, robs them of their oxygen, and 
destroys their usefulness. The impaired vitality pro- 
duces the disease known as fatty degeneration. Its 
operation upon the system is precisely that of increas- 
ing age. It hastens the inevitable approach of death. 
In health the blood has 8i narts of fat in a thousand ; 
in a drunkard the blood has 117 parts in a thousand. 
The result of this radical change in the constitution 
of the blood is felt in every part of the body. Bad 
blood can no more make good brains, good nerves and 
good muscle, than bad flour can make good bread. 

"Poisoning the blood, alcohol poisons the whole 
system, and affects with disease every vital organ — 
the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, the stomach. These 
are the physiological effects of alcohol as discovered by 
careful scientific investigation by the most eminent 
pathologists. They are confirmed by widely extended 
observation of the practical effects of drinking as wit- 
nessed in daily life." 

HUNT. 

In September, 1876, the International Medical 
Congress, consisting of over 600 delegates, met in 
Philadelphia ; and it was the most important med- 
ical body ever convened in this country. In its 
proceedings a paper was read by Ezra M. Hunt, 
M. D., on " Alcohol in its therapeutic relations as a 
food and a medicine," which was adopted as the 
sentiments of the Congress. From that paper I 
quote as follows : 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 221 

"What consumption is among diseases, that is alco- 
hol among medicines. How to limit the causes of the 
one is not more a professional question with us than 
how to abate the necessity for the effects of the other. 
It can not be concealed that the habit of the employ- 
ment of alcoholics as a beverage is supported by the 
persuasion that they have an important value as a 
food, or are reparative and recuperative, and so medi- 
cinal. Thus, as half food and half medicine, they are 

accredited into popular use." 

* * *•* * * * * 

" Any article to rank as a food must be convertible 
into tissue or force, in such a way as to contribute to 
healthy vitality, and aid the body in the performance 
of its normal functions." 

"It has been conclusively proved, says Lionel Beale 
[Med. Times, 1872), that alcohol is not a food, and 
does not directly nourish the tissues. 

" There is nothing in alcohol with which any part 
of the body can be nourished." (Cameron, Manual 
of Hygiene, p. 282). 

" It is not demonstrable at present that alcohol un- 
dergoes conversion into tissue " (Hammond, Tribune, 
Lecture, May, 1874), 

u Alcohol contains no nitrogen ; it has none of the 
qualities of the structure-building foods ; it is incapa- 
ble of being transformed into any of them ; itis, there- 
fore, not a food in the sense of its being a constructive 
agent in the building up of the body " (Richardson on 
Alcohol, p. 21). 

"There has been such unanimity of consent among 
those of divergent views in other regards, that alcohol 
is not a tissue-building food, that it is by quite com- 
mon consent excluded from this class." 

" Not detecting in this substance any tissue-making 
ingredients, nor in its breaking up any combina- 
tions, such as we are able to trace in the cell- 
foods, nor any evidence either in the experience of 
physiologists, or the trials of alimentarians, it is not 
wonderful that in it we should find neither the expec- 
tancy or the realization of constructive power." 

Then, after quoting numerous authorities show- 
ing that alcohol does not sustain animal heat x the 
learned lecturer says : 



222 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

" This fact, then, that alcohol is shown by the direct 
test of experiment, confirmed by experience, not to 
be a sustainer of animal heat, goes far towards neces- 
sitating its expulsion from the force-imparting class 
of foods." 

Xext the learned doctor says : 

" In further search for it, however, as an originator 
or eonserver of force, the next point is to find whether 
it increases the excretion of carbonic acid {carbon 
dioxide) which, as usual, would take place chiefly 
through the lungs. This is a leading proof of the food- 
value of the hydro-carbons of oils or of such liquids as 
are changed so as to impart vital force." 

And after citing the authorities on that point, 

lie sums up the result as follows : 

u It in no wise bears this second great test of a heat- 
producing food. Nor does it in any way in the sys- 
tem show such affinity for oxygen as to form water. 

" So far from this it is a great water consumer in 
every tissue to which it finds its way. It dries the 
stomach, the liver, and the lungs. It even steals 
moisture from the very corpuscles of the blood, and 
so far interferes with the supply of water and with its 
value as the universal medium of exchange amid the 
tissues, that for this very reason it oftener than any 
other article in common use initiate^ degeneration of 
important organs (R., pp. 41, 42). With water and 
alcohol the endosmosis is toward the alcohol, and 
alcohol requires four times the pressure to pass through 
the same membrane that water does (see Dal ton's 
Physiology). 

u When we consider how much all the functions of 
life depend on what the chemists and physiologists 
call osmosis, or the transfer of liquids with their sol- 
uble ingredients through various membranes, and that 
water is the all-important vehicle of this transfer, we 
must regard anything that interferes with this as in- 
volving serious risk both to function and to organ. A 
derangement of this all-pervading life-function is in- 
volved more in the continued administration of alcohol 
than in any one of the articles of the Materia Medica. 
It is fraught with imminent peril to the whole vital- 
ized and vitalizing structure. Bo alcohol does not so 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 223 

combine with oxygen as to provide moisture and thus 
show one of the results ot its appropriation by the 
system as an energy, but it makes grand larceny of the 
very thing it should contribute." 

Then he comes to the question : Is not fat re- 
cognized as the evidence of a nutritive process, and 
does not it result from the use of alcohol? And 
after elaborate discussion of this question concludes 
as follows : 

" The most constant effect of alcohol seems to be to 
cause that fatty degeneration of organs which is a sad 
substitute for healthy alimentation. 

" If alcohol should ever be shown to cause increase 
of fat, with the facts of animal chemistry as thus far 
elucidated, it would be far more likely to be found to 
be a pathological result of some obstruction to necessary 
change, than a healthy and vital contribution of force." 

" There may be a forced retention of the debris of 
the system which simulates the normal storing of vital 
force, but which is nevertheless so abnormal as to be 
damaging." 

And that is exactly what takes place in the 
bloated drunkard. It is the arrest of the neces- 
sary depuration, or excretion of the effete mat- 
ter of the tissues. And this is why a drunkard's 
body is always so corrupt, so liable to disease, and 
so difficult to cure. 

The same principle is set out by the lecturer 
under " metamorphosis of tissue." He says : 

" But the form in which the idea is now most promi- 
nently advanced that alcohol is, somehow, a food, is 
that it delays the metamorphosis of tissue^ and, so, in 
a secondary, but, nevertheless, effective way results in 
nutrition. 

" By the metamorphosis of tissue is meant that 
change which is constantly going on in the system 



224 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 



which involves a constant disintegration of material ; 
a breaking up and voiding of that which is no longer 
aliment, making room for that new supply which is 
to sustain the life. Vital power itself is found to be a 
process of reparation and decay. 

" A usual division is to call the process by which food 
is converted into tissue progressive metamorphosis, 
and that by which tissue is converted into force re- 
gressive metamorphosis. For this latter the term 
destructive assimilation (Dal ton, p. 325) is also used. 

" Both these processes are physiological, and the re- 
gressive metamorphosis or destructive assimilation is 
as healthful as the progressive process. It sounds 
conservative of health to say of a substance, that it 
delays the breaking down of tissue, but the histolo- 
gist or physiologist does not allow a substance which 
occasions such delay, to possess, because of that, either 
dietetic or remedial value. To increase weight by 
prolonged constipation is not a physiological process. 

" Speaking of this regressive metamorphosis or de- 
structive assimilation, Dalton says : c The importance 
of this process to the maintenance of life is readily 
shown by the injurious effects which follow upon its 
disturbance. If the discharge of the excrementitious 
substances be in any way impeded or suspended, these 
substances accumulate either in the blood or tissues, 
or both. In consequence of this retention and accu- 
mulation they become poisonous, and rapidly produce 
a derangement of the vital functions. Their influence 
is principally exerted upon the nervous system, 
through which they produce most frequent irritability, 
disturbance of the special senses, delirium, insensi- 
bility, coma, and finally, death.' 

" The description seems almost intended for alcohol. 
To claim alcohol as a food because it delays the meta- 
morphosis of tissue, is to claim that it in some way 
suspends the normal conduct of the laws of assimila- 
tion and nutrition, of waste and repair." 
* # * ■ ■ * # * # # 

" Having failed to identify alcohol as a nitrogenous 
or non-nitrogenous food, not having found it amena- 
ble to any of the evidences by which the food-force of 
aliments is generally measured, it will not do for us to 
talk of benefit by delay of regressive metamorphosis 
unless such process is accompanied with something 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 225 



evidential of the fact— something scientifically descrip- 
tive of its mode of accomplishment in the case at hand, 
and unless it is shown to be practically desirable for 
alimentation. 

" There can be no doubt that alcohol does cause de- 
fects in the processes of elimination which are natural 
to the healthy body and which even in disease are 
often conservative of health. In the pent-in evils 
which pathology so often shows occurrent in the case 
of spirit-drinkers, in the vascular, fatty, and fibroid 
degenerations which take place, in the accumulations 
of rheumatic and scrofulous tendencies, there is evi- 
dence that alcohol acts as a disturbing element and is 
very prone to initiate serious disturbances amid the 
normal conduct both of organ and function. 

" To assert that this interference is conservative in 
the midst of such a fearful accumulation of evidence 
as to result in quite the other direction, and that 
this kind of delay in tissue-change accumulates vital 
force, is as unscientific as it is paradoxical." 

* * * * * * * * * 

u With abundant provision of indisputable foods, se- 
lect that liquid which has failed to command the gen- 
eral assent of experts that it is a food at all, and be- 
cause it is claimed to diminish some of the excretions, 
call that a delay of metamorphosis of tissue conserva- 
tive of health ! ! ! 

u The ostrich may bury his head in the sand, but 
science will not close its eyes before such impalpable 

dust." 

* ****** * 

" It seems hardly possible that men of eminent at- 
tainments in the profession should so far forget one of 
the most fundamental and universally recognized 
laws of organic life as to promulgate the fallacy here 
stated. The fundamental law to which we allude is, 
that all vital phenomena are accompanied by, and de- 
pendent on, molecular or atomic changes; and what- 
ever retards, these retards the phenomena of life; 
whatever suspends these suspends life. Hence, to say 
that an agent which retards tissue metamorphosis is 
in any sense a food, is simply to pervert and misapply 

terms." 

* ****** * 

"The study of the laws of nature in the animal econ- 
15 



226 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

omy, and the results of chemical analysis, give us 
no warrant by which we can certify alcohol as a food." 

"In searching for alcohol as a food by all the tests 
afforded to scientific investigation, it eludes the 
grasp." 

* # * * -X- -3C- -5C- * 

"It may be the fabled food of gods, but alcohol is 
not an actual food for man which can be tried and 
proved such by any known laws of any known sci- 
ence, or by any test of any known art." 

"It is apparent that it is too often Bacchus that 
would appear in the robe of Ceres, or with the wand 
of Esculapius, and so call that food or medicine which 
is taken merely as a luxury or to satisfy an appetite. 
We shall have done essential service when in our own 
peculiar sphere we shall have removed all the false 
supports for alcoholic beverages , attempted to justify 
its use as a daily or occasional self-selected food or 
self-advised medicine." 

The careful reader will have observed that in 

the foregoing passages from the learned lecturer, 
he has demonstrated not only that alcohol is not a 
food in the sense of being converted into tissue, as 
a nutrient material ; but also that it never, directly 
or indirectly, imparts force or strength to the hu- 
man system. 

And this is pretty nearly conclusive of the ques- 
tion of alcoholic medication ; for it is administered 
by the doctors, chiefly, if not always, to add 
strength to the patient. 

I now introduce, from the same lepture, some 
passages on the question, "Is alcohol a medicine ?" 

"As we come to inquire into the value of alcohol as 
a medicine, after having found it unsustained as food, 
it is well to remember that the terms food and medi- 
cine, are often more nearly allied than the mention of 
the words is apt to indicate. A medicine is that which 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 227 



helps to heal or repair, for that is both the etymology 
of the word and the practical design of the article used. 
The process of restoration or repair is often but an ap- 
plication of the process of natural nutrition. Amid 
the progressive change of food into tissue, and the re- 
gressive disintegration which all life means, we must 
not deceive ourselves by terms. Much of the discus- 
sion, therefore, as to the value of alcohol as a material 
for medicine, is in reality to be determined by what it 
can do toward repairing the waste of tissue which oc- 
curs in disease. What it can accomplish in this re- 
gard is largely the determination of the question of its 
food-value. This we have seen to be so small and in- 
determinate that it will not do to push it forward as a 
valuable medicine in those regards in which a medi- 
cine chiefly concerns nutrition and the production of 
animal heat. 'The more we investigate,' says 
Lankester, i the relations of food to the human sys- 
tem, the greater must be the conviction that food is 
not only capable of maintaining healthy life, but by 
proper modification can be made the means of curing 
disease ;' and again, l In the management of food we 
have the great means for the cure and removal of 
disease.' 

"When we find that alcohol has no nitrogen with 
which to nourish ; that it does not respond to the laws 
by which animal heat is usually evolved ; that it at 
best undergoes such imperfect chansre in the system 
that much of it is found unchanged in secretions, ex- 
cretions, and tissues; that the products of its primary 
or secondary change can not be identified ; that it is 
not settled whether it diminishes the carbonic acid, or 
urea, or other excreta, or that such diminution would 
be reparative, we may well hesitate to assign it a 
place in the category of medicinal nutrients. While 
it has eluded the ingenuities of science, the persua- 
sions of art, and the astute diligence of interest to ex- 
temporize it into a food, it has tailed not less signally 
to vindicate itself as a medicine in the one particular 
in which it is most frequently urged as of value. 

li Another consideration that should make us exceed- 
ingly modest as to clinical assertion of its value as 
a medicine is, that the very next important thing to 
nutrition of tissue which it has been claimed to ac- 
complish, viz., the sustaining of animal heat, is now 



228 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

the very thing which it is claimed to reduce. "We 
have examined with some interest the different rec- 
ords of the value of alcohol furnished by authors on 
Materia Medica and Practice of thirty years ago and 
those more recently in print. New editions of the 
same author show often an entire shifting of the line 
of defense, or else repeat the old dicta in ignoring ig- 
norance of the most defined views of modern analysis 
and experien tial use. Many others have come to deny 
its value except within very narrow limits. 

In speaking of the testimony of the profession, he 
says: 

" It will not do to assume unanimity of testimony, 
and so carry a position, when page after page can be 
quoted from medical authors in nowise identified with 
any special reform, in opposition to such views (see 
summary by Parkes, pp. 280-285). 

" An examination of the leading books on Materia 
Medica and Therapeutics within the last twenty years, 
and of the limits which both science and practice have 
demonstrated, will serve to show how narrow is the 
field in which we are to look for the therapeutical 
effects of alcohol. 

" Excluded by common consent from the list of or- 
dinary aliments, eliminated from most of modern die- 
taries where foods are studied with precise relation to 
force and effective endurance, and from all systems of 
athletic training, pronounced so unreliable as a sus- 
tainer of animal heat as to be used on a directly op- 
posite hypothesis, identifying itself with toxics to a 
degree that almost organizes use into abuse, its field is 
so far narrowed as that the only classification it will 
admit is that of General Stimulant." 

That is to say, its only effect upon the patient is 
to excite the scanty vital powers to abnormal ac- 
tion to expel the intruder and further exhaust 
those powers, and not to aid them in any way to 
cure the patient. And then it is significantly 
added : 

" Many a horse which might have reached its jour- 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 229 

ney's end, at a snail's pace, it is true, but still safely, 
has utterly broken down on the road in consequence 
of a too frequent application of the spur." 

And this is exactly what alcohol does to a sick 

man : it helps to kill him. Richardson says : 

" The heart beats faster because the contractile force 
of extreme vessels is weakened, and so there is less re- 
sistance than natural." u It gives evidence not of in- 
creased, but wasted power." 

" Besides the effect of alcohol as a stimulant to the 
circulatory system , some claim for it a value as anerve 
stimulant." 

" 4 It is of all other causes most prolific in exciting 
derangements of the brain, the spinal cord, and the 
nerves' (Hammond). ' The effect had on the nervous 
centres starts them directly in the path of nervous ex- 
haustion' (Richardson). As its direct action is 'to 
lessen nervous force (Edward Smith), and as it is an 
irritant of nervous tissue, it is difficult to dissociate its 
vaunted nerve-stimulation from nerve-irritation.' " 

" The next prominent defense of alcohol as a medi- 
cine Hs to aid in the assimilation of food. 1 " 

u The phrase has been so often used, and the gen- 
eral popular and professional impression, like that of 
its heat power, has been so prevalent that men cling to 
to this view with the tenacity of an antiquated error. 
Pathology appears to tell us that alcohol coagulates 
albumen, and that it acts upon digestive fluids in a 
disturbing rather than a beneficial way." 

I have drawn thus copiously upon this great lec- 
ture of Dr. Hunt, because the auspices under which 
it was delivered invests it with an authority that 
no regular physician can consistently reject. That 
Congress was composed of over six hundred rep- 
resentative physicians of England and America. 
They adopted that lecture as their sentiments, and 
so it may be said to be the embodiment of the au- 
thoritative medical opinion of this country and Eng- 



230 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

land on the subject in hand. And what is it? The 
plain import of it is that there are no established 
facts to sustain the use of alcohol, in any case 
whatever, as a medicine. And more, it is not mere 
opinion, but it demonstrates that the science of 
this question, so far as facts have been so estab- 
lished as to constitute science, is that alcohol is 
always injurious and never useful as medicine or 
otherwise. 

And Dr. Hunt does not speak as a temperance 
man, but as a physician — for the healing art merely; 
— radically so, for he says: 

u If I knew that brandy would save my patient, and 
that a thousand, copying from his restoration, would 
make self-resort to the same remedy and die, I would 
in solemn sorrow, yet in holy fealty to my patient, 
give him the brandy, and hold myself not responsible 
for the self-inflicted result to others." 

And he is so cautious, and so loyal to his pro- 
fession, that he studiously leaves the question open 
for further scientific investigation, without giving 
his individual opinion, further than it is embodied 
in the scientific facts that he has presented, not- 
withstanding that those facts, bearing as they do 
on every phase of the question of alcohol as a med- 
icine, render it impossible that alcohol can be a 
medicine in any case ; for science never contradicts 
itself. 

So that, on the whole, we have the representative 
medical opinion of England and this country that 
alcoholic medication is always bad ; and such opin- 
ion is founded purely on medical science. Any 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 231 

thing to the contrary is yet to be discovered, to 
say the least. 

RICHARDSON. 

And that is not all. In the Cantor Lectures, de- 
livered by B. W. Richardson, M. D., F. R. S., be- 
fore the Edinburgh Society of Arts, in 1815, we 
have a full and fair exposition of the present state 
of medical science in respect to the effects of 
alcohol upon the human body. And he, too, speaks 
as a physician and not as a temperance man. In 
his introductory note to the printed lectures, he 
says : 

" I have spoken out freely the lessons I have learned 
from nature, no pledge binds me, and no society 
banded to propagate particular views and tenets 
claims my allegiance. I stand forth simpiy as an in- 
terpreter 'of natural fact and law." 

And the American edition of these lectures is 
endorsed to the public in a highly eulogistic pre- 
face by Dr. Willard Parker, of the New York Col- 
lege of Physicians and Surgeons. These lectures 
are more in scientific detail than that of Dr. Hunt, 
from which I have copied so largely, but in their 
conclusions they are identical with it ; so that I 
shall content myself with a very few quotations. 
He says: 

" In the end, all these alcoholic fluids are depres- 
sants, and although at first, by their calling vigorously 
into play the natural forces, they seem to excite and 
are therefore called stimulants, they themselves supply 
no force at any time, but cause expenditure of force, 
by which means they get away out of the body and 
therewith lead to exhaustion and paralysis of motion. 
In other words, the animal force which should he ex- 



232 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

pended on the nutrition and sensation of the body, is 
in part expended on the alcohol, an entirely foreign ex- 
penditure." 

His third lecture is devoted to a full and minute 
scientific examination of the physical action of 
alcohol on the human body, showing conclusively 
that it always, in large or small doses, in sickness 
or health, deranges the healthful action of every 
vital organ ; so that its use is always more or less 
damaging, per se. And then in the fourth, he takes 
up the question whether there be ever any compen- 
sation for such damage ; stating the question as 
follows : 

"We have studied in the previous lecture the purely 
physical action of alcohol on the animal body, that 
which stands apart from the action of the food, and 
we have learned from the study that over the 
nervous system and over the vascular supply this 
spirit exerts a specific influence. We now inquire 
whether the influence ends there, or whether there 
may be, in addition, either a sustaining, and construct- 
ing, or a heat-giving power — that is to say, a force-giv- 
ing quality in it. If there be, then the simple physi- 
cal effects are perchance tolerable, or at all events are 
not sufficient to militate against the advantages 
which lie on the food side of the question." 



"Let us then ask the question : Can alcohol be in 
any sense accepted a? performing any other part in the 
body save that physical part which we have consid- 
ered r" 

After a full discussion of the replenishing of the 

tissues, he answers that part of the question thus : 

"In conclusion, therefore, on this one point of alco- 
hol, its use as a builder of the substantial parts of the 
animal organism, I fear I must give up all hope of af- 
firmative proof. It does not certainly help to build 



SCIENTIFIC PROOFS. 233 

up the active nitrogenous structures. It probably does 
not produce fatty matter, except by an indirect and 
injurious interference with the natural processes." 

And proceeds to the further question : 

u If alcohol be not a substance out of which the ani- 
mal tissues are formed, may it not be a source of ener- 
gy of actual motion ; may it not supply the power of 
doing work ?" 

Now, let the reader bear in mind the scientific 
fact that the only possible way of supplying force 
or strength to the human body, is to administer 
some substance which, by its digestion and assimi- 
lation, renews the wasted and wasting tissues, or 
by its combustion or decomposition furnishes heat 
to the body. Then it is to be stated that the 
learned lecturer goes on to demonstrate, to scien- 
tific certainty, from actual experiments of his own, 
that instead of supplying heat, alcohol always re- 
duces the temperature of the body, and says : 

" Here, however, I leave the theoretical point to re- 
vert to the practical, and the practical is this : that 
alcohol cannot by any ingenuity of excuse for it, be 
classified amongst the foods of man. It neither sup- 
plies matter for construction nor heat. On the con- 
trary, it injures construction and it reduces temper- 
ature." 

And after relating a further experiment by which 

it is proven that alcohol does actually diminish 

muscular power, he thus states the general result : 

" In man and in animals, during the period between 
the first and third stages of alcoholic disturbance, 
there is often muscular excitement, which passes for 
increased muscular power. The muscles are then 
truly more rapidly stimulated into motion by the 
nervous tumult, but the muscular power is actually 
enfeebled." 



234 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

"Once more : I would earnestly impress that the 
systematic administration of alcohol for the purpose 
of giving and sustaining strength is an entire delu- 
sion." 
*## * ###* 

"Again, the belief that alcohol may be used with 
advantage to fatten the body is, when it is acted upon, 
fraught with danger. For if we could successfully fat- 
ten the body we should but destroy it the more swiftly 
and surely ; and as the fattening which follows the use 
of alcohol is not confined to the external development 
of fat but extends to a degeneration through the mi- 
nute structures of the vital organs, including the heart 
itself, the danger is painfully apparent." 

On the whole, then, the result of the demonstra- 
tions of this distinguished scientist and physician 
is that all the known facts as to the effects of alco- 
hol on the human body go to show that it is never 
useful as a medicine or otherwise, but always inju- 
rious. 

EDMUNDS. 

And that is not all. We have also the testimony 
of James Edmunds, M. D., member of the Royal 
College of Physicians of London, to the same ef- 
fect, as to the medical use of alcohol, in a series of 
lectures delivered in New York in 18T4 — he also 
speaking only as a physician and not as a temper- 
ance reformer — and also endorsed by Prof. Willard 
Parker. 

I need not tire the reader by quoting from Dr. Ed- 
munds the same scientific facts that I have already 
given ; but in my next number I shall avail myself 
of his instruction on another phase of the subject. 

In concluding this part of the subject I refer the 



PRACTICAL FACTS AND MEDICAL ARGUMENTS. 235 

professional reader to the works from which I have 
quoted herein, to wit: 

"Alcohol as a Food and Medicine." 12 mo, 13T 
papes. By EzraM. Hunt,M. D. Pager, 25 cents; 
cloth, 60 cents. 

"On Alcohol." 12 mo, 190 pages. Paper cov- 
ers, 50 cents; cloth, $1. By Benjamin W. Rich- 
ardson, M. A., M. D., F. R. S., of London. 

"The Medical Use of Alcohol." 12 mo, 96 
pages. Paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. By James 
Edmunds, M. D., of London. 

Sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price. Ad- 
dress, J. N. Stearns, Publishing Agent, 58 Reade 
St., New York. 



IV. 

PRACTICAL FACTS AND MEDICAL ARGUMENTS. 
HUNT. 

Dr. Hunt, to whom I introduced the reader in 

my last number, says : 

''Science, at least, has failed to indicate how alcohol 
in any one way aids assimilation. Just so has exact 
practice failed, and testimony rests too much on a gen- 
eral impression and clinical belief. This, though 
worthy of respectful consideration, recent investiga- 
tion shows to be suspicious for want of accuracy of 
evidence. We need clinically tabulated and classified 
results from which sources of error are eliminated on 
which to base any extended use of alcoholics for med- 
icines. Such expressions as that it " bridges over 
weakness,' 'assists assimilation,' 'acts as a quick nu- 
trient,' etc., can by no means pass as axiomatic in the 
face of the fact that tney do not stand the test of diet- 
ary studies, and are not accepted by many of the most 



236 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 



advanced professional thinkers and clinicians of our 
day." 

"In all Chronic Diseases, the place of alcohol, as a 
remedy, is, by quite general professional consent, still 
more restricted. 

"The poor inebriate no longer needs to be assured 
that a hair of the dog that bit him can avail to cure 
the bite. Few would now say with Anstie that alco- 
hol is 'good to prevent epilepsy;' that it is the best 
treatment for the convulsions of teething ; the sov- 
ereign remedy in neuralgia, the cure-all for dyspepsia, 
and the eradicator of tubercle in phthisis. 

"Facts of pathology, as to brain, and nerves, and 
stomach, and lungs, have of late come in upon us too 
rapidly for this. Fatty and fibroid degenerations in 
every organ of secretion, warn us as to the serious im- 
port of the embarrassments which it is the normal 
tendency of alcohol to initiate and confirm." 

# * * * * # # # 
"The dividing line in medicine, even between use 

and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that common 
mortals, in srroping for it, generally stumble beyond 
it, and the delicate perception of medical art too often 
fails in the recognition." 

"Any medical man who has been in practice for the 
last quarter of a century, cannot but recognize the 
wonderful change which has taken place. We have 
come to understand more thoroughly the laws of ali- 
mentation, and to see how much more can be accom- 
plished by nutrients in cases in which stimulants were 

once the chief reliance." 

# «■■■■*■■■■*•■'■•*-«■■* * 

" ; The fashionable plan,' says an advocate for their 
employment, 'of giving great quantities of strong 
spirits, is happily dying out, and is being replaced by 
a more careful practice.' 

"In the whole management of lung diseases, with 
the exception of the few who can always be relied 
upon to befriend alcohol, other remedies have largely 
superseded all spirituous liquors. Its employment in 
stomach disease, once so popular, gets no encourage- 
ment, from a careful examination of its local and con- 
stitutional effects." 



PRACTICAL FACTS AND MEDICAL ARGUMENTS. 23 T 



" In candor it must be admitted that many eminent 
physicians deny the efficacy of alcohol in the treat- 
ment of any kind of disease, and some assert that ibis 

worse than useless." 

#*** * * * * 

"Abundance of opinion can be found both in adula- 
tion and condemnation, but it is very noticeable that 
those who feel themselves bound to speak in accord 
with the physiology of function, and the pathology of 
organic changes, and those whose experience is such 
as has derived clinical observation of that looseness 
which must occur where alcohol is administered amid 
manifold nutrients and medicines, are expressing their 
views with far more doubt as to the efficiency of alco- 
holics." 

* * # # # * # * 

" We can see how the normal expenditure of force 
increases progressive metamorphosis. We can meet 
the demand not bygiving doubtful liquids, but by such 
foods as by quick digestion or rapid assimilation supply 
the want. In disease we are fast finding out that the 
demand created by accelerated waste is of the same 
nature, and that such foods become the real medicines. 
If change of tissue goes on so rapidly as to exceed the 
limits of conservative waste, we may also begin to 
study how to make the given amount of food go further, 
or to make up for weakened heart-action. But this is 
to be done by sedation, by the recumbent posture, by 
reduction of temperature through unquestionable 
methods, rather than by the use of a medicine claimed 
to retard change in an inexplicablejway, and known in 
its physiological action to entail functional defects and 
organic lesions such as never attach to water, quinine, 
phosphorous food, or to various direct sedatives. 

* # * # # * 

" Whatever may have been the preconceived views 
of physicians, we believe any one who will candidly 
sit down and study the leading authorities on materia 
medica, and therapeutics, and the practice of medicine, 
and by their side study the details of chemical physi- 
ological investigation, and the methods of general 
medicinal use, will be satisfied that the therapy of 
alcoholics needs to be carefully reviewed from a strictly 
dietetic and medicinal stand-point. 

4% While on the one hand it is alleged that the preju- 



238 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 



dices of reformers in the interests of abstinence may 
lead them to extremes, we have in various ways evi- 
dence that traditional and popular beliefs, and the 
forces of habit and authorized practice handed down 
by mere weight of general authority, need careful re- 
viewing by the light of those more exact methods of 
test and of observation, which are now the aim and 
tendency both of our science and art. 

'- If w'e are to shut out the testimony of thedevotees 
of total abstinence on an assumption of bias, we must 
also shut out all those who themselves use alcoholic 
drinks in any form, and leave the unprejudiced in- 
vestigation of the question to those physicians who 
are not identified with temperance movements on the 
one hand, and on the other are not under the unsus- 
pected influence of that prejudice which the self-joy- 
ment of a daily glass of wine is equally apt to induce.' 1 
* # * * * * * * 

"Our preconceived notions must not lead us to at- 
tribute to alcoholics properties which neither science 
nor art can prove. Unable to ascertain food- value or 
medical-value according to the usual rules of evidence, 
we must not imagine evidence. If the article used 
were inert, the case would be different and the as- 
sertion of food or medicinal-values of little practical 
import. But the opposite is too severely and intense- 
ly true as to the material in hand. 

"The capacity of the alcoholics for impairment of 
functions and the initiation and promotion of or- 
ganic lesions in vital parts is unsurpassed by any rec- 
ord in the whole range of medicine. The facts as to 
this are so indisputable, and so far granted by the pro- 
fession, as to be no longer debatable. Changes in 
stomach and liver, in kidneys and lungs, in the blood- 
vessels to the minutest capillary, and in the blood to 
the smallest red and wnite blood disc disturbances of 
secretion, fibroid and fatty degenerations in almost 
every organ, impairment of muscular power, impres- 
sions so profound on both nervous systems as to be 
often toxic — these and such as these are the oft mani- 
fested results. And these are not confined to those 
called intemperate. 

"We are aware that ''when meat in excess ' is the 
cylinder escapement for all this, but with facts drawn 
not from intemperance, but so-called moderate use, 



PRACTICAL FACTS AND MEDICAL ARGUMENTS. 239 



with the facts as to the physiological effect on man 
and animals of doses not toxic ; with its tendency to 
evil, and only evil, and that continually, the burien 
of proof of its medicinal value lies entirely with those 
who advocate it. When practical medicine tells us 
that three-quarters of all diseases in adults who drink 
at all, are caused thereby, and when pathology shows 
'its greatly predominating action to be that of a neu- 
rotic,' even where its general effects are not so obvi- 
ous, we may well watch it with a careful eye. The 
practitioner needs to respond with incontestable evi- 
dence of a value which rigid science pronounces un- 
tenable, and which variable experience has not estab- 
lished. 

u When the wailing cry of evil to society reaches us, 
high moral obligations require us to make out a clear 
necessity of use, or else ignore the article. If there is 
doubt, society in this case is entitled to the benefit of 
the doubt. 

"The medical, the pathological, the social, the moral 
questions are so imminent and urgent, so critical and 
crucial, that it is right to put each physician in the 
witness-box, and let him tell how he knows that alco- 
hol is ever a food or ever a remedy. It is right to 
confront him with the results of manifold experiments, 
with the facts of skilled observers, with its failure to 
respond to the tests which estimate real food, and its 

inability to define its precise sphere as a medicine." 

******** 

"It is asking too much of us to be empirical as doc- 
tors lest some medico-beverage advocate should stig- 
matize us as a profession of reformers. We are called 
upon to vindicate its use as a medicine by the most 
exhaustive evidence of its curative agency." 

GILMAN. 

Dr. N. Gilman, of South Deerfield, Massachu- 
setts, says*. 

" Take a patient reduced low by fever, for instance. 
Look at the state of the system and the condition of 
the various functions. Apply sound physiological and 
pathological principles, and ascertain the wants of the 
system ; then look at the properties of alcohol, and see 
if it is capable of supplying them. When reduced low 



240 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 



by fever, the vital powers are nearly exhausted by the 
previous excitement and deficient nutrition. Is stim- 
ulation indicated ? Does the patient need to have 
another excitement produced in the system, which 
will make a still greater draft on his latent nervou* 
energies ? Does he not rather require perfect rest and 
suitable nourishment? Undoubtedly; for nothing 
else can impart real permanent strength, and restore 
the wasted powers of life. This is so plain that it can 
be understood by any reflecting person, without any 
knowledge of physiology. When the mass of the 
people, who have no medical education, shall get their 
eyes open, and look into this subject for themselves, 
some of our learned craft will be ashamed of their own 
stupidity. 

" We will next look at alcohol, and learn its nature ; 
then determine whether it imparts any strength to the 
human body. Alcohol, in all its forms, is a mere stim- 
ulant; or rather, with more propriety, it might be 
called an irritant poison, possessing no tonic or 
strengthening properties whatever. The digestive or- 
gans have no power to change it, or extract from it 
any nourishing principle. Without undergoing any 
change, except what is produced by dilution , it is taken 
up by the absorbents, carried into the blood, and goes 
the rounds of the circulation. Thus every organ and 
tissue of the body has an irritating poison brought into 
actual contact with it. This must be expelled with- 
out delay, or their vitality is endangered. An addi- 
tional task is thus imposed upon the vital organs. The 
apparent increase of strength is nothing more than 
the latent nervous energies, aroused for the sole pur- 
pose of driving out this enemy from the body. When 
this task is over there is still greater exhaustion. Noth- 
ing has been gained by the operation, but a positive 
loss has been sustained."" 

Then, after quoting Dr. Carpenter, wherein he 
shows that alcohol disturbs the vital functions by 
interfering with nutrition, by coagulating the 
soluble albumen by preventing the decarbonization 
of the blood, etc., Dr. Gilman continues : 

" The injury arising from this source is proportionate 



PRACTICAL FACTS AND MEDICAL ARGUMENTS. 241 



to the quantity used. In health no appreciable effect 
might be produced by the small quantities administered 
in sickness ; yet we may safely infer that when the 
system is so much prostrated that the lungs can, with 
great difficulty, so far purify the blood, as to enable it 
to stimulate the heart and brain to action, a very 
minute quantity of alcohol, by imposing an additional 
task, may cause a fatal result. The physician who 
prescribes alcohol under such circumstances, thwarts 
his own purpose. It has long since been known 
that it never imparts any new strength, but only 
makes a draft on what one already possesses. As in 
health, so in sickness, it is never capable of affording 
any other strength than is imparted by the lash to the 
jaded horse. 

" This being the case, it would seem to be self- 
evident that it can, in no case of prostration from 
fevers, or any other debilitating causes, facilitate re- 
covery. On the contrary, it must hasten death, when 
the nervous energies are too much exhausted to allow 
of the recovery without stimulation, and actually 
cause a fatal termination, when the vital powers are 
barely sufficient to keep up the action of the heart till 
they can be invigorated by rest and nutrition. It is 
only in cases where the patient has more strength than 
heactually needs, tha' it would be safe to stimulate with 
alcohol. The physician who prescribes port wine, or 
any other alcoholic stimulant in such cases, does not 
understand the difference between stimulation and 
nutrition, consequently he fails to prescribe scientifi- 
cally or successfully. A patient thus reduced may be 
compared to a lamp with the oil so nearly exhausted 
as to present but a slight flickering blaze. The gentlest 
motion or breath of air will extinguish it. It will 
burn for hours if not disturbed ; yet, if you pick up 
the wick, a momentary flame is produced, and then 
entirely disappears. If you had carefully filled the 
lamp with oil, the flame would have been perma- 
nently revived. 

" So much for theory ; now for practice. A person 
is sick of fever, a crisis takes place at the proper time, 
the patient is convalescent, and the doctor recom- 
mends a little wine to strengthen him. Under its use 
the patient feels better, an appetite is excited prema- 
turely, and indulged too freely. He grows worse, and 
16 



242 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

is soon apprised by his physician that c he has been 
imprudent in eating, and caused a relapse of the fever. ' 
Another has typhoid fever, is very feeble, and wine is 
resorted to, for the purposeof keeping up the strength. 
The vital powers are rallied, and strong hopes are en- 
tertained of his recovery. But the next day, perhaps, 
an inflammation is developed in the brain, lungs, or 
abdominal viscera, and the symptoms become alarm- 
ing. The doctor is summoned, and assures the friends 
that ; another fever has set in, and he fears it will go 
hard with the patient.' 

"It may be laid down as a rule, that if alcoholic 
liquors relieve, or seem to cure one disease, they cause 
some other, as bad or worse. The pleasurable feelings 
resulting from the stimulation lull all suspicion of the 
mischief going on, which is usually referred to the 
patient having ; taken cold or eaten something to hurt 
him,' or, as not unfrequently happens, that modern 
scapegoat, Calomel, is obliged to bear away all the sin 
and reproach of this deleterious article. The necessity 
of stimulants, in such cases, is not so great as is gen- 
erally supposed. The patient is not always dying when 
the pulse becomes very feeble and intermittent. This 
is no very uncommon occurrence when the excite- 
ment of fever is gone. If there are latent nervous 
energies, nature will call them into action ; if there 
are none, stimulants will have no effect." 

In the above, Dr. Gilman has given us, very com- 
pactly : science, experience, and argument — al- 
together entirely conclusive of this question. 

TRALL. 

The late Dr. R. T. Trail was a regularly educated 
Allopathic physician, and he practiced the alcoholic 
system of medication for many years. But being 
a man who did his own thinking, he became con- 
vinced by his own practice that much of the med- 
ical practice of the schools was radically wrong, 
and became a convert to the hygienic treatment of 
sick people, and the latter years of his life were de- 



PRACTICAL FACTS AND MEDICAL ARGUMENTS. 243 

voted to the advocacy and practice of that system. 
And now I will let him speak for himself as to al- 
coholic medication in levers : 

" I have tested this question of stimulation both 
ways. For many years after graduating as an M. D. 
I prescribed alcoholic stimulants in ' low fevers and 
cases of debility.' I lost about the usual proportion of 
patients ; that is to say, of mild cases, one in fifteen or 
twenty, and of severe cases, one in four or five. In 
due time I became skeptical as to the benefit of stim- 
ulants, used them less, and had better success. Fi- 
nally I came to the same conclusion that Sir John 
Forbes, M. D., F. R. S., arrived at by a somewhat dif- 
ferent process of reasoning, viz., that fc more patients 
recover in spite of the medicine than with its assist* 
ance.' It is now more than fifteen years since I pre- 
scribed a particle of stimulus of any kind, and al- 
though I have treated hundreds of cases of all the feb- 
rile diseases incident to New York and its vicinity, in- 
cluding measles, scarlatina, erysipelas, small-pox, re- 
mittent, typhus, typhoid, congestive and ship fevers, 
pneumonia, influenza, diphtheria, childbed fever, dys- 
entery, etc., etc., I have not lost one. And this state- 
ment I have repeatedly published in this city, where 
the facts, if otherwise than as I represent, can be 
easily ascertained." 

The above statement is perfectly reliable, for Dr. 

Trail was a man well known in New York. And 

many other physicians have testified to the same 

effect. 

EDMUNDS. 

The distinguished Dr. Edmunds, of London, re- 
ferred to in my last number, says : 

U I believe, in cases of sickness, the last thing you 
want is to disguise the symptoms — to merely fool the 
patient ; that if alcohol were a stimulant, that is not 
the sort of thing you would want to give to a man 
when exhausted from fever. If your horse is exhaust- 
ed, do you want to give him food, or would you give 



244 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 



him rest and food ? So, if your patient is exhausted 
by any serious disease, surely it would be the more ra- 
tional thing to let him rest quietly, to save his strength, 
and in every possible way to take care to give him 
such food as will be easily absorbed through the diges- 
tive apparatus and keep the ebbing life in the man. 
Well, those are the considerations, ladies and gentle- 
men, which I would submit to you as an answer to 
the question so pertinently put by our chairman here 
to-night, Dr. Parker. And when we come to take up 
specific diseases, I will consider that disease which we 
know is produced by alcohol — delirium tremens. It 
is a disease not unknown on this side of the Atlantic ; 
certainly, it is not unknown to us in England. What 
is the theory ? The notion is to cure the man by a 
hair of the dog that bit him. I do not know whether 
that commends itself to you as a reasonable proposi- 
tion or as a reasonable theory of curing a man." 

" The theory is with very many eminent physi- 
cians, to whose opinion I should defer with "the 
greatest possible respect, although I should strenuously 
argue against it from my own theory and experience 
— the theory is that you should let them down gradu- 
ally; that you should go on and give them spirit. 
We have had many eminent men on our side of the 
Atlantic who have given these patients enormous 
doses of spirits. Suppose one of us had an affection- 
ate friend who for many weeks had been putting 
poison in our coffee, and at last we found ourselves 
getting ill, and the ordinary symptoms of arsenical 
poisoning coming on . Would you think it the proper 
thing to go on giving it to him, or would you stop the 
arsenic at once ? I submit, you would have it stop- 
ped all at once. So, I maintain, when you have a man 
in a state of delirium tremens, you should stop giving 
him that substance which poisons his nervous sys- 
tem, and has contributed to bring about that state out 
of which the exhausted condition of the mind comes. 
I submit that is an ordinary common-sense position. 
I would tell you this also: that we have found, in 
looking into the statistics of delirium tremens treated 
in the old way, that the mortality was very great ; and 
while I have gone through all those phases of treat- 
ment when younger, and I thought, immensely clev- 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 245 



erer, I have come to the conclusion that the use of 

spirits in the case of delirium tremens does nothing 

but worsen the patient, and probably hasten his death. 

"I now, without the slightest hesitation, in every 

case, should immediately stop the spirit ; and I find 

that very few cases of delirium tremens that I have 

are fatal, provided I can have a resnonsible nurse or a 

resolute wife who will stop the miserable patient from 

getting out or sending a servant for a bottle of brandy, 

Which he might have under his pillow and drink on 

the sly." 
******** 

" The physiological laws by which vitality is con- 
served and maintained, are precisely the same in the 
essence, whether one is sick or whether one is well." 

*T******* 

" I wish to submit very strongly that, when a lady 
is suffering excessive strain — we will say she has 
to provide for the wants of an infant, and she is told 
by her mother perhaps, or lady friend, that she must 
take a little stout two or three times a day, must take 
a glass of wine or a little spirit — I wish to submit to 
you very clearly and positively that the same law 
must come in when you want simply to maintain 
health in the most robust and vigorous person." 

That is to say, if alcohol is good to restore the 
strength of a weak person, it is also good to main- 
tain the strength of a vigorous person. 

In closing this chapter, therefore, I think we may 
safely conclude that the science of this question, 
as given in my last number, will always be held 
good in practice. 



V. 

THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED — THE PRINCIPAL ERROR. 

The fundamental error upon which the alcoholic 
practice of medicine has hitherto rested is that 
alcohol is a heat-producing food, and therefore a 



246 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

force or strength-giving material. After long con- 
troversies on that question, the researches and ex- 
periments of Dr. Anstie seemed to establish the 
fact that alcohol is not all eliminated from the hu- 
man body in its natural state, but that a portion of 
it is somehow consumed or decomposed in the 
body, from which it was inferred that it is respira- 
tory food, oxygenated or burned, and gives up 
heat and force to the system, which appears quite 
reasonable. But after that, and quite recently, the 
distinguished Dr. Richardson, for the "British 
Association for the Advancement of Science," in- 
stituted and executed a careful and elaborate ser- 
ies of experiments by which it was proven to ac- 
tual certainty that alcohol diminishes the heat of 
the human body, and also diminishes the muscular 
power, as stated in my third number of this series. 
All this seems to be unknown to the generality 
of practitioners. At any rate it is unheeded, and 
they are practicing upon the old theory of alcohol 
as a heat and force-producing agent. 

STIMULATION AND EXERCISE. 

A distinguished writer of the other side speaks 
of the "beneficial agency of a stimulus (alcohol) 
which is so very analogous to the stimulus of a 
sharp mountain walk." 

Now, I think that no doctor would prescribe a 
sharp mountain walk, or any other severely fatigu- 
ing exertion, for a patient exhausted with fever, 
or in any other case, for the purpose of imparting 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 24? 

strength. Intense physical exertion exhausts the 
vital powers, and it is well said that the stimulus 
of alcohol is analogous to a sharp mountain walk ; 
for alcohol exhausts the vital powers too. Both 
excite an abnormal action of the vital organs ; in 
the one case to get rid of the alcohol, in the other 
to sustain such extraordinary outward exertion : 
both consuming an extra amount of tissue — in 
other words, vitality. Not to say that physical 
exercise is not healthful ; it is. A certain amount 
of it is indispensable, ordinarily, to keep the body 
from dying of torpor — laziness. The physical sys- 
tem is so constituted that the necessity that is 
upon us of physical labor to supply the wants of 
the body, carries with it the corelative necessity 
of a certain amount of physical exertion to main- 
tain the body in health. And to a healthy, vigor- 
ous person, I think a considerably severe and con- 
tinuous labor year after year, even to every day 
fatigue, so long as none of the physical powers are 
really overstrained and overtaxed, and with rea- 
sonable periodical rest, is not unhealthful — it only 
requires a greater amount of alimentation to re- 
plenish the excessive waste of tissue and keep up 
the vitality. But such excessive exertion is never 
necessary to health ; and much less is very tire- 
some stimulating exercise, such as excites unnatu- 
ral action of the vital powers — as a brisk mountain 
walk — promotive of strength or recuperation in a 
debilitated patient. The benefit of exercise — for 



248 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

sick or well — is not from that kind of exercise. 
In case of very low vitality, where the life is in 
danger of going out, absolute quiet is indispensa- 
ble. Any exertion to stimulate the system as 
aforesaid is extremely hazardous. And the doc- 
tors will persist in giving alcohol to do exactly the 
thing that they will not permit to be done by exer- 
tion. 

We know that reasonable exercise is essential to 
recovery in many chronic diseases, just as it is to 
maintain health in a healthy person ; but I think 
the physiological rule is that the exercise must not 
be such as to tire or stimulate. That is not what 
it is for. Its purpose is to keep the vital organs 
from stagnation and clog, so as to keep up their 
natural action, but not beyond that. And this, 
alcohol does not do. Its effect is all abnormal, 
stimulating, exhausting. 

Dr. Hunt, from whom I have heretofore quoted, 

sums up this matter as follows : 

" Now, recollect, food is that which puts strength 
into a man, and stimulant is that which gets strength 
out of a man ; so that when you want to use stimu-r 
lants, recollect that you are using that which will 
exhaust the last particles of strength with a facility 
with which your body otherwise would not part with 
them." 

Dr. Trail puts it in this way : 

" The system spends its force to get rid of the alco- 
hol, but never derives any force from the alcohol." 

PARKER DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO DO WITHOUT ALCOHOL. 

Dr. Willard Parker, after writing all that I 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 219 

quoted from him in my third number of this 
series, from which I copy as follows : 

" Distilled liquor is never, under any circumstances, 
a food ; adds nothing to the substance of the body ; is 
never digested ; adds nothing to the forces of the body ; 
it weakens force ; acts as an irritant, and so dimin- 
ishes force by compelling the body to put forth efforts 
to get rid of the intruder ; is not a fuel and is not 
burned; does not add to the real warmth of the body, 
but unnaturally lowers it ; overworks the vital organs ; 
passes into the blood undigested and acts disastrously 
upon the blood corpuscles, and impairs their vitality 
and destroys their usefulness ; hastens the approach of 
death; poisons the blood, poisons the whole system 
and affects every vital organ with disease." 

After all that he says : 

" There is a use for distilled liquor in the human 
body. It is essential medicine in some forms of 
disease." 

And he gives his reasons — the best reasons that 

the case admits of, for there is none abler to do it 

than he. What are they ? He says : 

"I am called to visit a person who has suffered 
some sudden shock by which the heart has been 
affected and the whole circulation depressed ; his sur- 
face is cold and his system collapsed. I put the alco- 
hol into his stomach, and in one minute and a half it 
rouses the exhausted system, spurs it to an unwonted 
activity and thus enables it to spring the chasm into 
which it would otherwise have fallen." 

This is ingenious. It looks plausible. But it 
will not stand the test of science and common- 
sense. Let us see. The Dr. says his patient's 
system is exhausted. That is, the vital forces are 
diminished so that there is danger that they will 
go out entirely. He is in the same condition as if 
the vitality were impaired in any other way. 



250 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

What is wanted is to prevent it from running 
lower, or as little lower as possible, and to recu- 
perate it. Now what I want to know is , how alco- 
hol in the stomach can do this, by "rousing 
the exhausted system and spurring it to an un- 
wonted activity," when as the Dr. says " it dimin- 
ishes force by compelling the body to put forth 
efforts in order to get rid of the intruder, over- 
works the vital organs, and impairs vitality;" 
which is simply exhausting, wasting the life, and 
increasing the chances of a fatal termination. 

But how about the chasm that Dr. Parker uses 
alcohol- to enable the patient to spring over instead 
of falling into it ? Is there any such thing in the 
case of a sick man, as if a man were in a position 
that he must leap over a literal chasm or fall into 
it and lose his life, and when a stimulant to excite 
all the vital forces to unnatural action for the 
moment, even at the expense of unnatural depres- 
sion afterwards, would undoubtedly be useful. Is 
this the case with the sick ? I guess not. When 
the patient takes alcohol does it lift him over a 
chasm ? I guess not. What does it do ? Let Dr. 
Parker answer. He says : 

" Alcohol introduced into the body acts as an 
irritant in the manner in which a grain of sand 
acts upon the eye. The nerves of the stomach, 
and of the heart, and of all the vital organs are 
thrown into a state of excitement ; the rapidity of 
the circulation is increased/' etc. What for ? to 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 251 

lift over a chasm ? 'No. " To get rid of the 
intruder " as the Dr. says ; i. e. the alcohol, and 
that is all. 

No, Dr. Parker's chasm is a mere figure of 
speech. There is nothing analogous to it in case 
of the sick. There is no chasm to spring over, for 
which an unnatural exertion of the remaining vital 
forces is necessary ? All that is wanted is to keep 
them in motion ; and to this end all that are left 
must be economized, and not wasted on the un- 
necessary work of expelling an intruder that is 
guilty of all the bad things that Dr. Parker 
charges alcohol with. 

It requires no medical or physiological knowl- 
edge to understand that the abnormal action of 
the vital powers of a debilitated patient, exhausted 
from whatever cause, cannot increase those powers, 
or save them from further exhaustion. Again Dr. 
Parker says : 

" I do not know how I could treat ship fever with- 
out distilled liquor. When my poor patient lies in an 
utterly exhausted condition, his system without vital- 
ity sufficient to enable him to digest and assimilate 
his food, I give him a spoonful of alcohol with milk, 
and under the stimulus of the alcohol the stomach 
will digest, and the system will assimilate the milk." 

This is really wonderful, in connection with the 
learned doctor's theories as to the effects of alcohol. 
Let us see. The patient's " system is without 
vitality sufficient to digest and assimilate his food." 
Alcohol does not impart any vitality or increase it 
in any way, but impairs and diminishes it — so the 



252 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

Dr. says. We all know that alcohol does not di- 
gest food. Its nature is to preserve it in its natural 
state. The stimulus of the alcohol merely excites 
all the vital organs to unnatural action to expel 
the alcohol — so the Dr. says. Now, the patient, 
without sufficient vitality to digest and assimilate 
milk, a spoonful of alcohol, without increasing the 
vitality, will enable him to digest the milk, and do 
the extra work of expelling the alcohol to boot ! 
This is one of the mysteries of alcoholic medica- 
tion. To the common mind it would seem that if 
a patient is unable to digest food for want of suffi- 
cient vitality, nothing less than an increase of 
vitality can enable him to do so ; for the vitality 
'must do the work. 

But alcohol is an aid to digestion in general, the 
Dr. thinks, but is not sure of it. He says : 

"If taken with food, it may be an aid to digestion ; 
if taken before food it prevents digestion." 

He is sure it prevents digestion when put into 
an empty stomach, by coagulating and destroying 
the pepsin, and with that the power of digestion, 
because the operation has been seen, in the case of 
a man who had an opening in the stomach so that 
the operations within could be seen. But he 
guesses at the other side. He thinks it may be an 
aid to digestion when taken with food. This is 
another curiosity of alcoholic medication. Taken 
before food it destroys the digestive power ; taken 
with food it may aid digestion. How it can have 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 253 

such opposite effects merely in consequence of the 
time of taking it, how it can aid digestion, when 
there is no digestive power in it — its nature being 
to preserve food intact — or how " a poison danger- 
ous and deadly," as the Dr. says it is, which all 
the forces of the body are at once excited to vio- 
lent action to expel as an enemy, and to drive out 
from the stomach and into the circulation on its 
way out of the body in one minute and a half, as 
the Dr. says they do, how these things can be is 
entirely unaccountable. 

On the whole, Dr. Parker's reasons for alcoholic 
medication are only excuses for a barbarous prac- 
tice that he seems to think must be kept up because 
he found it in the books, and has kept it up all his 
life, and because, as he says, he knows no other 
way ; excuses that are clearly antagonistic to all 
the science of alcohol, and its effects upon the 
human organism, as given by himself and well 
established by the scientific world. 

EDMUNDS, RICHARDSON AND HUNT. ' 

Our scientific friends by whom we have been so 
largely instructed in the science of this matter, 
and against the use of alcohol as a medicine — Drs. 
Edmunds, Richardson and Hunt — are not yet 
entirely satisfied that alcohol may not be useful in 
some cases. They do not say it is, but they 
expressly leave the question open, so far as their 
science has not foreclosed it. For instance, Dr. 
Edmunds says : 



254 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

" I cannot but believe that alcohol also, potent drug 
as it is, may be useful in many cases of disease ; but 
tne cases in which I use it in may own practice, I con- 
fess, become less and less frequent every day. And I 
should feel that I lost very little were I deprived of it 
— indeed, I almost think that if mercury and many 
other remedies that are used so freely now were used 
less freely the practice of medicine would be more suc- 
cessful than it has hitherto been." 

Dr. Richardson says : 

" I am not going to say that occasions do not arise 
when an enfeebled or fainting heart is temporarily re- 
lieved by the relaxation of the vessels which alcohol, 
on its diffusion through the blood, induces." 

Dr. Hunt says : 

u Yet in some sudden attacks of faintness, as result- 
ing from failure of heart-action, or some profound ner- 
vous impression conveyed to the heart, alcohol may 
cause a reaction, and if no other article is at hand, may 
be never so good as a medicine in such an emergency." 

And this is all that is left of alcohol as a medi- 
cine, according to these eminent scientists and 
physicians. What does it amount to ? Only that 
they are entirely unprejudiced, and give to alcohol 
the benefit ot the doubt — leaving the question open 
where it is not absolutely closed against alcohol. 
I might rest here, but let us examine these reserva- 
tions. Dr. Edmunds thinks it " may be useful in 
many cases," but his own experience is teaching 
him that the science of the matter, that he has 
given us, is correct, and so he is using alcohol less 
and less every day. Certainly he cannot hold out 
to use it at all very long at that rate. 

Drs. Richardson and Hunt may well leave it pro- 
blematical whether alcohol can be beneficial in 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED, 255 

fainting. Fainting is a deficiency of blood to the 
brain, inducing unconsciousness — unequal circula- 
tion ; that is all. Alcohol accelerates the heart's 
action and the circulation, but it is difficult to see 
how it can equalize the circulation, inasmuch as 
its tendency is to pervade all parts of the system 
alike. And it is also difficult to see how " the re- 
laxation of the vessels which alcohol induces" can 
equalize the circulation. 

ALCOHOL A FORCE — BARTHOLOW. 

A distinguished medical practitioner of my ac- 
quaintance pins his faith in alcohol upon the fol- 
lowing from Bartholow's Materia Medica: 

"At present the weight of authority and the deduc- 
tions of experiment are in favor of that view which 
maintains that, within certain limits (one ounce to one 
and a half ounce of absolute alcohol to a healthy man), 
alcohol is oxidized and destroyed in the organism, and 
yields up force which is applied as nervous, muscular, 
and gland force." 

And I think this is now the principal reliance of 
the alcoholic medical practitioners. But they are 
behind the times. This theory, long in dispute, 
and always contradicted by the obvious manifesta- 
tions of alcohol, has been entirely exploded by the 
experiments of Dr. Richardson, as stated in my 
third number, wherein he has demonstrated to ab- 
solute certainty that alcohol never, under any cir- 
cumstances, yields up force in the human body. 

And Dr. Willard Parker, of the New York Col- 
lege of Physicians, has adopted that view. He 
says : 



256 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

" Distilled liquor is never, under any circumstances, 

a food. It adds nothing to the substance of the body. 

It is never digested. It adds nothing to the forces of 

the body. On the contrary, it weakens force. It acts 

as an irritant; and so diminishes force by compelling 

the body to put forth efforts in order to get rid of the 

intruder." 

***** * *** 

" Poisoning the blood, alcohol poisons the whole 
system, and affects with disease every vital organ — the 
lungs, the liver, the kidneys, the stomach." 

It may be added that it is quite a reckless asser- 
tion to say that an irritant poison — as alcohol is 
admitted by the profession to be — can be a useful 
food, that it can be assimilated, converted into liv- 
ing tissue, constituting life and vital force. It 
cannot be. It is a contradiction. Poison is inim- 
ical to life. Food is exactly the opposite. It is 
what life is made of. There never was a more ab- 
surd theoiy than that poison can have any vital 
force-giving quality in it. 

SPECIAL CASES. 

But almost every one has a special case where 
alcohol has been good. My friend, appearances 
are delusive in this matter. And your precon- 
ceived opinion in favor of alcoholic medicine con- 
stitutes more than half of your faith in its virtue. 
You administer the alcohol ; if the patient gets 
well you attribute the cure to the alcohol, of 
course, without inquiry whether the recovery was 
not in spite of the alcohol instead of by virtue 
of it. Or if the patient dies, you do not ask your- 
self whether the alcohol killed or he died in spite 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 25 1 

of a remedial power in the alcohol. The fact is that 
we are so indoctrinated in the theory that alco- 
hol is good for sick people, that the scientific facts 
in relation to its effects on the living organism are 
entirely lost sight of. Although, as Dr. Willard 
Parker says, " it hastens the approach of death" 
yet we keep on using it, and when it kills, we shut 
our eyes to the facts of its deadly nature, espec- 
ially in its effects upon a small remaining fraction 
of vitality, as I have explained it in these papers, 
and solace ourselves with the reflection that " all 
has been done that science could suggest." 

But, more specifically : a friend tells me that a 
lady was run down with puerperal fever, the sys- 
tem in a state of collapse, the surface getting 
cold. A little brandy was administered internally, 
the surface was briskly rubbed with alcohol, and 
she came up. Now the science of this matter, as 
given by Dr. Willard Parker, is that this patient 
would have gotten up the easier without the alco- 
hol ; for he says that when taken internally it does 
not impart any heat, but exhausts it, especially 
from the surface, and we know that when applied 
to the surface its rapid evaporation abstracts the 
heat of the bodj- ; and in its effects upon the 
system in general, its only result is to further 
exhaust — use up — the scant vitality, as heretofore 
shown from Dr. Parker's and others' writings, and 
thus further endanger the life. " But the patient 
at once improved and finally recovered, and so we 

n 



258 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

know that the alcohol was good;" I will be 
answered, No, you don't know that. Nature does 
the curing, and how can you know that she can 
more easily restore the patient after the excitement 
and abnormal action of all the vital powers to 
expel the alcohol and to overcome the blood poi- 
soning that the alcohol produces, thus largely 
wasting the slender stock of vitality, than to 
simply restore the patient without that extra 
work? 

And then, I have a case exactly in point by 
which I know. Thirty-six years ago I had a boy 
all run down with fever, in a state of collapse, the 
surface getting cold. No alcohol or other stimu- 
lant was used, but I applied artificial heat by hot 
blankets and rubbing. He speedily revived and 
got up without alcohol. And in my friend's case 
above stated, if anything was any aid to nature, it 
was the rubbing to excite the circulation to the 
surface, and the patient got well in spite of the 
obstruction of the alcohol. Another case : A lady 
had been long in a debilitated condition ; had 
been "taking everything, " as the saying is — qui- 
nine, and all the other approved "building up " 
medicines, and all to no purpose. Finally she 
abandoned all other medicines and went down to a 
little ale, and then she immediately improved and 
got well. Now the secret of this cure is very 
plain. The abandonment of the more powerful 
drugs is what did it; and without the ale she 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 259 

would have done still better. But the ale was so 
slight a damage that the remaining vitality was 
able to overcome it and restore the patient, too, 
immediately. 

A BEER ARGUMENT. 

A very curious argument was lately promulgated 
by a distinguished professor in a medical college and 
published in a paper of large circulation, in favor 
of the use of fermented alcoholic liquors, as medi- 
cine and as beverage. 

He says that there are two kinds of alcohol — 
fermented alcohol and distilled alcohol. He does 
not tell us what the difference is, only that there 
is a scientific, a very important, a fundamental dif- 
ference between fermented and distilled liquors, 
and that fermentation is the work of Omnipotence, 
and distillation is the work of man or the devil ; 
ergo fermented liquors are good for people to 
drink ; that is, as he says, while " a man can get 
foolish on it, he is not very likely to get very 
drunk ;" but distilled liquor "is the poison ; this is 
what does the harm." 

He tells us also that God makes the fermented 
liquors, and we are enjoined by the Bible to use all 
things in moderation ; therefore we must use fer- 
mented liquors. 

And in illustration of his theory he says that ni- 
trogen, pure, is poisonous. It is death to breathe 
it for a short time. But mixed with oxygen in at- 
mospheric air it is necessary to life. And so, alco- 



260 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

hol, in a concentrated — distilled— state, is poison- 
ous, while in a diluted state — fermented liquors — 
it is useful and necessary. And, "all milk has 
sugar in it ; and in the milk it is useful ; God put 
it there for a purpose. But if we were to take the 
sugar out of the milk, by a process analogous to 
distillation, and feed our children on that, they 
would die in three weeks' time. So it is when we 
take the alcohol out of the wine or cider, and 
mix it with something else to give it a flavor — juni- 
per berries or the like ; taken out of the article in 
which God put it, and used alone, it becomes de- 
structive." But for the high source of these theo- 
ries, they would seem to be too obviously unsound 
to require any notice. But great names are some- 
thing in a bad cause, and so I will briefly review 
them. 

His first proposition reverses all the science and 
all the experience of the world as to the nature of 
alcohol. It is produced by the vinous fermenta- 
tion and in no other way. There is no difference 
between alcohol in any fermented mass and alcohol 
after it is distilled. The process of distillation 
does not make any chemical or scientific changes 
in alcohol — always previously produced by the vi- 
nous fermentation — and no change whatever, save 
in concentration, and separation from the coarser 
matter of the fermented mass. Distillation is 
simply the conversion of the alcohol existing in 
fermented liquors into vapor, driving it off and 



THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 261 

condensing it into liquid. That is all. There is 
nothing chemical, nothing mysterious about it. 
Take a pint of wine ; distill the alcohol out of it, 
and then we call the alcohol part of it brandy. That 
brandy contains exactly the same alcohol that the 
wine did. It contains the same constituent ele- 
ments, and in the same proportions. It contains 
exactly the same poison that the pint of wine did 
—no more, no less. Let a man drink all of that 
brandy, and it will have exactly the same drunk- 
making power, and the same poisoning power upon 
him that a pint of that same kind of wine would 
have; no more, no less. No chemist or well in- 
formed physician, except the said Professor will 
dispute this. 

And then he is mistaken about the vinous fermen- 
tation being the work of Omnipotence. If a drop 
of alcohol was ever produced by the natural decay 
of any fruits, I am sure that no fermented alcoholic 
liquor was ever produced so that it could be gathered 
up. Vinous fermentation is the work of Omnipo- 
tence, it is true, under certain conditions that must 
be provided by man ; i. e. there must be a weak 
solution of saccharine matter, air, and a certain de- 
gree of heat. With them provided by man, Om- 
nipotence does the rest ; just as in distilling. Given, 
a fermented liquor, a certain degree of heat, and 
an apparatus to catch the product, and then Om- 
nipotence does the distilling. It drives off the 
concentrated liquor from the diluted mass. So that 



262 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

the process of distillation is about the same work 
of Omnipotence as is that of fermentation. To 
produce any tangible result they both require the 
aid of man. 

And then the learned Professor's argument that 
fermented liquors should be used because God made 
them — if it were true that He does make them — is 
too thin. Suppose that God does make fermented 
liquors, in fruits or otherwise, He does also make 
the rattlesnake's virus, the saliva of the mad dog, 
the upas tree, and a thousand other things in vege- 
table, animal and mineral kingdoms, that are delete- 
rious to human life, and which nobody would think 
of using because God makes them ! 

Secondly : this illustration of nitrogen is not in 
point. There is no analogy between the two cases. 
It is not any poison in pure nitrogen that will kill 
by breathing it. It is the want of oxygen that 
kills. Put a man in a vacuum and he will die just 
as quickly as he would in nitrogen gas, and cer- 
tainly there is no poison in vacuum. And so, by 
excluding oxygen from the lungs in any other way , 
as by water, by a cord around the neck, or other- 
wise, death ensues in a very few minutes, not from 
any poison, but from the absence of oxygen in the 
lungs. To compare these processes with concen- 
trated and diluted poison is only sophistry. If a 
man breathe pure nitrogen he excludes another gas 
that is indispensable to life — that is what kills. If 
a man takes pure alcohol, or diluted alcohol, into 



CONCLUSION. 263 

the stomach, he does not thereby exclude anything 
that is necessary to life. He may have all other 
needful things, and the alcohol may kill him ; and 
in any event it poisons him. And then, supposing 
that nitrogen were a poison, and that by diluting 
it, it is rendered inert not only, but useful and neces- 
sary, as the doctor says ; to say that all other 
poisons are rendered useful by dilution because 
that one is, is presuming a good deal upon the 
reader's gullibility. Arsenic, strychnine, or any 
other poison except alcohol, is not rendered inert 
by mere dilution ; and it requires a vast amount of 
cheek in any man, however eminent, to ask the 
people to ignore their own senses, and reverse their 
previous modes of thinking, by believing that the 
poison of alcohol is extinguished by mere dilution, 
without a why or a wherefore, save that a learned 
doctor says so, and supports his say so by the fact 
that nitrogen gas alone will not support life, while 
a mixture of that and oxygen will ! 

Thirdly : This milk argument, that a child can 
live on milk, but on sugar of milk alone it would 
starve for want of suitable nourishment ; therefore 
the poison of alcohol is extinguished by mere dilu- 
tion needs no answer. 



YI. 

CONCLUSION. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is that there 
is no really medical science authorizing the use of 



264 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

alcohol in any case whatever — medical science is 
entirely the other way. 

And yet the great multitude of doctors go on 
with their alcoholic medication — alcoholizing sick 
people to keep them up, as they call it, and we 
often hear of dying patients being kept alive for 
days by alcoholic stimulants ! And all this with- 
out any scientific pathological reason, and against 
the facts well established by all anti- alcoholic prac- 
titioners ; all this without a why or a wherefore 
only that their books contain the prescriptions, and 
they are sustained by such 

QUEER ARGUMENT 

as was used a few years ago by Professor Alonzo 
Clark, of the New York College of Physicians and 
Surgeons, who stated, in a lecture to his medical 
class, that brandy had been the means of saving 
the lives of many typhus fever patients, and that 
without it they surely would have died. After the 
lecture he was asked if he had ever treated his 
patients any other way. He said u No." He was 
then asked if he had ever known any fever patients 
treated without stimulants, by others. He replied 
that he never had ; but he knew they would die if 
they did not have the brandy. 

That is all that is to be said on that side. All 
their patients are alcoholized. Some of them get 
well ; ergo the alcohol cures them. How do they 
know ? I say they get well in spite of the alcohol, 



CONCLUSION. 265 

and the alcohol kills many of those that die, and 
the facts are abundant to prove it. 

COMMON SENSE. 

Now let us take this matter in a common- 
sense way, and see if we cannot get to the 
bottom of the subject. What is death ? It is 
simply the stoppage of the action of the organs of 
the body that constitutes life. And what stops 
such action ? The complete exhaustion of the forces 
of the system that keeps it going, and which we call 
vitality. Now I would like to know how alcohol 
can keep a patient alive ; keep him up, etc., when 
it diminishes the vitality, with all other bad effects 
that medical science convicts it of. It is a fallacy 
— a dangerous fallacy — a murderous fallacy. 

WHY IT IS KEPT UP. 

Why will the doctors keep up such a practice ? 

Dr. Edmunds tells us why, as follows : 

" There is one difficulty I have in this matter, and 
that is that unfortunately the weight of opinion in 
the medical profession, I am afraid, appears to be in 
favor of using these things as beverages. Well, medi- 
cal opinion may be resolved into two elements — 
elements which any person whose brains are properly 
constructed can appraise : first, medical dogma ; and, 
secondly, medical science. Now, medical science has 
its well-defined scientific facts, and the inferences 
which logically attach to those facts. Medical dogma 
is something else. What is the history of medical 
dogma ? Thirty years ago the fathers of the very 
men who now prescribe brandv, and wine, and ale for 
almost all the diseases to which we are liable, pre- 
scribed what?* Not brandy, nor wine, nor ale, but 
mercury, bleeding, and starving ; and when the old 
woman said she would not be able to stand it, and the 



266 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 



doctor replied that he would not take the responsi- 
bility of the result of her refusing his prescription, she 
said she would take the responsibility, and she is a 
line old woman now, but would not have been if she 
had yielded to the persuasions of these eminent gen- 
tlemen. They believed conscientiously in this mode 
of practice. Do not imagine that I am suggesting that 
the old gentlemen whose pictures we have seen of 
bleeding their patients had any intention to kill them. 
There is, however, no doubt about this fact : that they 
did kill nine patients for every one that they cured. 
I think you wiJl find that medical dogma is a curse to 
mankind and a delusion to the profession. 



"As a student in olden time, I dare say I have killed 
scores of little children by the old-fashioned treatment 
of tartar emetic and leeching when they had a little 
cold on their chest. It is quite natural that the young 
ones should be influenced by the weight of opinion of 
their elders. Many medical men really have no well- 
defined belief, but they have seen the old gentlemen 
from whom they learned their profession do things in 
a certain way, and they remember what has been 
taught them at the hospital, and they continue to do 
the same way without thinldng of the matter. You 
will do them a great deal of good if you follow them 
up and question them. Ask them why they order you 
spirit, what is it to do ? If you ask your doctor ques- 
tions, you very often do him service ; you call his at- 
tention to this matter. My attention was called by a 
rough-handed total abstainer. I ordered him stout. I 
said, 'You must take a little beer.' He sat down in 
my dining-room and said, ' Doctor, 1 am sure you 
have a reason for everything. If you can show me it 
is good for me, I will take it; I have taken nothing 
for a dozen years, and I am a great deal better without 
it. What do you think it will do for me?' I had 
never been cornered in my life in that way. I really 
found I had no answer; and so you will find your 
doctors will have no answers for such questions. 
When they appeal to experience, resting it upon med- 
ical dogma, recollect the facts with regard to medical 
dogma — that medical dogma, as such has never been 
anything but a delusion and a snare." 



CONCLUSION. 26T 

WHAT THE TROUBLE IS. 

The trouble is that the average doctor does not 
discriminate between medical dogma and medical 
science. He sees something written down in a 
medical book, and he takes that for medical science, 
whether founded on any ascertained medical facts 
or noc. The old practice of " mercury, bleeding 
and starving," was not founded on any ascertained 
facts of curative power — there were no such facts, 
and so it was not science. And so now ; the books 
are full of alcoholic prescriptions, without any es- 
tablished facts as to their modus operandi in cur- 
ing ; so that it is not science — it is medical dogma 
— somebody's mere opinions, with nothing to sus- 
tain them ; and the ordinary physicians pursue the 
alcoholic practice because they find it in the books, 
without further question. 

MEDICAL SCIENCE. 

But by the discoveries of the most eminent phy- 
sicians and physiologists of Europe and America, 
in recent years, we now have a medical science in 
respect to alcoholic medication. 

For example : when a medical writer recommends 
alcohol to build up an exhausted patient, without 
founding that prescription on any known fact show- 
ing how it will build him up, that is not science. 
But when Dr. Edmunds, or Richardson, tells us 
that alcohol will not build up the patient, but will 
be sure to further exhaust him, because of the well- 
established facts that it is not food in any sense, 



268 . ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

does not impart heat, and does not in any way in- 
crease muscular power, but does really expend and 
waste the remaining vitality of the patient, more 
or less, by the abnormal action of all the vital or- 
gans to expel the alcohol ; and so of all other well- 
established manifestations of the injurious effects 
of alcohol, as medicine or otherwise ; this is medi- 
cal science. And this is what the doctors ought to 
be studying, instead of the medical dogmas of 
twenty 3 r ears ago. They ought to keep up with 
the march of medical science. 

NOT FOR TEMPERANCE ONLY. 

There are a good many anti-alcoholic medication 
temperance people who are such merely for the 
sake of temperance. They believe alcohol to be 
good for medicine, but not indispensable, because 
substitutes can be had. And some go so far that 
when told by their physician that they must die 
unless they take alcohol, they say they will die then, 
and die sober. But they do not always die in such 
cases. But all adyanced scientific thinkers on this 
subject go against it for the sake of the sick, as 
well as for the temperance cause ; go against it for 
its intrinsic and universal badness ; go against it 
because it is murderous per se, especially upon sick 
people ; go against it because it is always injurious 
upon sick or well people, and never useful. 

And this theory is sustained by all the science 
that appertains to the effects of alcohol upon the 



CONCLUSION. 2f>9 

human machine, as heretofore set out in these 
papers. And not only so, but the scientific theory- 
is fully sustained in practice. The anti-alcoholic 
practice does save life, while the opposite does kill ; 
i. e. it clearly so appears wherever it has been tried. 
It is to be admitted that it is difficult to know to a 
dead certainty what cures a sick man if he gets 
well, or what kills him if he dies. Take a patient 
run down with fever; he is alcoholized, and dies. 
We cannot know for certain whether the alcohol or 
the disease killed him ; or if he gets well we cannot 
know whether the alcohol cured him or he got well 
in spite of it. That is to say, we cannot know how 
this is by an individual case, only as we apply the 
science of the matter to it, as before stated. 

But when we have the testimony of reliable phy- 
sicians who have had long experience in the alco- 
holic practice, and also in the opposite practice — 
hundreds of cases in each — in all kinds of fevers 
and other diseases, in which alcohol is considered 
to be especially indispensable — when we have the 
testimony of such men, that in the former practice 
they always lost a considerable proportion of their 
cases, and in the latter they never lose a case when 
called in reasonable time ; if there is anything in 
the practical application of scientific theory, the 
proof is as clear as experience can be that alcohol 
is always bad. 

It is entirely clear, therefore, that when temper- 
ance doctors and temperance patients reject alco- 



2V0 ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION. 

hol as medicine, they should not do it with ex- 
cuses ; not merely because it propagates intem- 
perance, and thus does more harm than good ; but 
for that and more ; because it always helps to kill 
sick people and never helps to cure. 

The general adoption of this true temperance 
platform would save thousands of lives that alco- 
holic medicine is all the time killing, and start the 
temperance cause in a career of advancement that 
it never can hope for otherwise. 



i>a.:r,t thibd. 



ESSAYS ON LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY 
AND WEALTH. 

L— THE TIMES OF 1873-1818. 
Contraction not the cause — The cause of the trou- 
ble — Useless palliatives — The remedy — Strikes 
— No class in fault — Lions in the way — Unequal 
production — The remedy will apply itself — The 
proof 



1. — CONTRACTION NOT THE CAUSE. 

The purpose of these little essays upon the phil- 
osophy of the subjects named above is to correct, 
as sententiously as I can, some of the erroneous 
theories that always prevail, more or less, with 
working men, and have obtained especial promi- 
nence since 1873. 

The substance of this number was written early 
in 1878 — the darkest time of the panic — and I in- 
troduce it here as preliminary to the specific dis- 
cussion of my subjects. I present it as it was 
written — applicable to that time, as the most eligi- 
ble way to enforce the economic truths involved. 

The greenback inflation philosophy is held out 
to the people as a panacea for all the financial, in- 
dustrial and business troubles that the country has 
been afflicted with for these four years. With a 
(271) 



272 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

great deal of flourish and superficial reasoning, it 
is alleged that the panic that broke upon us in 
1813 was caused by a contraction of the currency — 
the lack of sufficient circulating medium to trans- 
act the business of the country ; and so it is ar- 
gued that the cure can only be by supplying that 
deficiency ; whereas the amount of circulating 
money of the country was greater in 1873-4 than 
in the prosperous years of 1870, 1871, and 1872, 
or any previous year. 

I take the following figures from statements 
made by ex-Speaker Grow to the New York Tri- 
bune, Jan. 12, 1878 : 

The entire circulation was, in 
1870. ...... $681,983,110 

1871. 714,260.507 

1872. 734,557,162 

1873. 746,100,224 

1874. - 758,139,653 

Mr. Grow speaks from the official records ; and 
I think these figures have never been disputed, 
only in this way : The conversion of the 7-30 bonds 
and other interest bearing securities into 5-20s is 
alleged to be a contraction of the currency — count- 
ing those securities as circulating money — and so 
a great contraction is figured out : a proposition 
that only needs to be stated to refute itself ; for it 
the first named securities were circulating money, 
the 5-20s into which they were converted are also. 

Taking Mr. Grow's figures for true, then, it will 
be seen at a glance that it is not any lack of money 



the times of 1873-1878. 273 

that has caused our troubles. And I propose to 
show what the real trouble has been. 

2 — THE CAUSE OF THE TROUBLE. 

I think it is evident enough to the most superfi- 
cial observer that the war of the rebellion, some- 
how, created the disturbance in the economic rela- 
tions of the country that superinduced the industrial 
and business depressions commencing in 1873, and 
continuing with increasing intensity up to the 
present time. Let us see if we can ascertain how. 

For four y ears all the available energies of the 
country, on one side and the other, were employed 
in war, war upon our own soil. A million of able- 
bodied men, more or less, were engaged in the con- 
sumption of the current products of industry, as 
well as large amounts of fixed capital, and produc- 
ing no material values. After the temporary in- 
dustrial depression, caused by the change from peace 
to war, inl861, andafter the ingenious financial pro- 
cesses of the government had supplied abundant 
pecuniary means to pay for all the expenses of 
war, as well as a sound and satisfactory currency 
for the people, sufficient in volume to carry on the 
extraordinary amount of business incident to a 
gigantic war, all the then existing manufacturing 
and mining industries found themselves fully and 
profitably employed. And not only so, but the 
demand was for more and more ; giving full em* 
ployment and high wages to all species of labor, 
18 



274 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

high prices for all the products of agriculture, and 
large profits to all industrial enterprises. 

Those were what we call good times. I think 
they were really good times to the masses of the peo- 
ple, for everybody could have employment at high 
rates, not only in money price, but as measured by 
the necessaries and comforts of life, irrespective of 
inflated currency and speculative times The 
provident classes could accumulate largely, the im- 
provident could expend freely upon luxuries, and 
altogether things went on swimmingly, on the high 
pressure principle, to the end of the war. 

The close of the war in 1865 involved great 
changes in the manufacturing industries of the 
county, but no diminution of them, for the time 
being. The diversion of manufacturing from the 
production of the material of war to that of com- 
modities adapted to time of peace, was easy. The 
inordinate demand for all commodities during the 
war had kept the markets always comparatively 
bare, and prices high, so that at the change all ex- 
isting industries kept along in full and profitable 
employment, and no relapse was caused by the 
great change from war to peace. 

But then, the consumptions of war having ceased, 
and that large class of consumers having become 
producers — a large share of them in manufactur- 
ing and mining industries, increasing their volume 
correspondingly — the looked for crash after the 
war not having come — the usual concomitant of a 



the times of 1873-1878. 275 

long course of prosperity, i. e. speculation, over- 
trading, general extravagance, inflated prices, etc., 
ensued. In fact the people — business men, manu- 
facturers, mechanics, laborers, mining operators, 
miners, professional men, all, all became intoxicated 
with the prosperity of the times, and were blind to 
the fact that that state of things was some time to 
have an end. The great profits of all manufactur- 
ing and mining industries had multiplied those 
enterprises to an unprecedented extent ; everybody 
forgetting that any of those prospering pursuits 
could be overdone ; forgetting that too much coal, 
andiron, and cloth, and the hundreds of other pro- 
ducts of factories could be produced and put upon 
the market. For the time being too many work- 
ing men could not be obtained at mines, at facto- 
ries, in- cities and towns, and on railroads ; for the 
intoxication of inordinate prosperity — whether 
real or fictitious, it matters not to this discussion 
— stimulated every variety of industrial enterprise 
— railroad building^nd public and private improve- 
ments of every description, as well as the ordinary 
manufacturing and mining operations. 

3. — USELESS PALLIATIVES. 

Such an inordinate rush of those industries 
could not but outrun the current demand for their 
products. But it went on, year after year, with 
increasing accumulations of stock, bolstered up 
with all the expedients that could be devised to 
ward off the inevitable economical effect of glutted 



276 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

markets, until 1873, when the comparatively trifling 
event of the failure of a banking house, which had 
partaken largely of the general speculatiye mania 
of the times, pierced the economic bubble that 
was ready to break on the slightest disturbance in 
the general monetary affairs of the country. 
And then, not to be taught by the plainest indica- 
tions of the pressure of economic law upon the 
overcrowded industries, and the speculative busi- 
ness of the country, and under the fallacy that the 
then existing trouble was owing to collateral and 
transient causes only, and not to the vital fact of 
the vast overproduction of the manufacturing and 
mining industries, all the ingenuity and wisdom of 
the country was for years exhausted to keep all 
the factories, and mills, and shops, and mines, and 
railroads, and all their employes in full employ- 
ment, rather than diminish any of those pursuits, 
in the vain hope that the same prosperous times 
were to be restored by a continuance of the same 
industrial policy that had destroyed them — by the 
continuous production of so vast quantities of 
commodities not wanted. In the vain hope, I say, 
for the laws of trade are inexorable. They will 
have their sway in spite of all expedients that may 
obstruct them temporarily. An overproduction in 
any department of industry must break itself 
down. It has. 

And now, here we are, after more than four years 
of pressure of economic law, pressing harder and 



the times of 1873-1878. 277 

harder, flatter and flatter, until the reaction from 
the unnatural business and industrial activity is 
complete ; yea and more, for as is usual in such 
times of revulsion, the stagnation and the shrink- 
age of values have gone beyond the normal stand- 
ard ; and we are told that there are three millions 
of unemployed working men in the country, for 
whom it is gravely proposed, by some process of 
legislation, or some legerdemain of finance, to cre- 
ate employment in the same vocations that they 
have been forced out of as aforesaid — in the pro- 
duction of commodities that there is no market 
for, and cannot be. It cannot be done. 

4. — THE REMEDY. 

And is there no remedy? Is there no work 
for those people ? In this great boasted asylum for 
the oppressed of all nations, is there a necessity for 
three millions, or for any other number of willing 
men to be out of work? Is there such a thing in the 
philosophy of life as a general overproduction that 
starves people ? Is there any law in nature by 
which, without any pressure of population upon 
the limit of the land, there is not work for every- 
body to do whereby to procure the necessaries of 
life? Let us see. By the foregoing it is clear 
that there has been an unequal production — too 
many men employed in everything else but agri- 
culture, and too few in this. The reaction has 
thrown those surplus men out of employment and 
it is impossible to devise any way to give them em- 



278 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

ployment in those pursuits, because it is impossible 
for three men to get full work and good wages to 
do the work of two. 

But while there is no remedy in any inflation 
scheme, or in any other process to create employ- 
ment in contravention of the laws of supply and 
demand, in our vast area of fertile unoccupied 
lands, always inviting the hand of labor, always 
offering remunerative employment for indefinite 
numbers of working men, we have the ready rem- 
edy. And until all our vacant lands are occupied 
and cultivated to the extent of their food produc- 
ing power, there will always be something for 
everybody to do, not only for our present popula- 
tion, but for the surplus industrious and worthy 
population of other lands. There is room for all. 

Oh, that is pretty hard, we are told. Poor la- 
boring people cannot get there and get started. 
Very well, I am not making the law, but only stat- 
ing it, when I say that some of them must go upon 
land and get their bread and butter out of the soil, 
or starve. That's the way God has fixed the laws 
by which these matters must be governed. He has 
spread out, within our reach, His vast expanses of 
fat lands and invites the needy to go up and take 
them. They can if they will, and there is no other 
way to solve this labor problem. 

In this great country of unoccupied fertile land, 
awaiting the hand of industry to produce abund- 
ant independence to millions of happy homes, there 



THE TIMES OF 1873-18T8. 279 

is not the slightest need, for some hundreds of 
years yet, of any pressure of labor upon the hired 
labor market so as to depress wages below a liberal 
rate. The trouble is in the prevailing passion of 
young men — old men too — to press upon railroads 
and towns and cities to sell themselves for hire, 
instead of scattering out upon the broad expanses 
of God's green earth and cultivating the soil. 
5. — strikes. 

And in such a time as this, finding the wages too 
low, and when an abundance of idle men are ready 
to take the places of the present hired workmen, 
in all branches of industry, they expect to remedy 
the trouble by combinations and strikes ! As if 
employers of labor had made all the trouble and 
could be compelled to cure it ; when the fact is 
that they have suffered no less severely than have 
the working men. No class of people is exempt. 
Men who were rich a few years ago find them- 
selves poor to-day — thousands of them. Business 
men, employers of working men, capitalists, corpo- 
rations large and small all suffer more or less, un- 
equally it may be, but all are reached by the com- 
mon malady. Many go under, others struggle 
along and pull through by the hardest. And it is 
by all this that the pressure reaches the working 
men. Many a manufacturing firm, with the hard 
earnings of a lifetime involved and risked in the 
carrying of their business successfully through 
these times, with orders and work running down 



280 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

to the most meagre dimensions, and the prices 
down to rates unprecedented ; many a man of that 
description who has for many a year given work 
to numerous working men, would be happy to ex- 
change places with his cheapest mechanic, with 
work and wages provided for him, and relieved 
from the care and tribulation, the anxious days and 
the sleepless nights that such business involves in 
such times as these. And these are the men that 
are supposed to be oppressing labor. 

I do not say that a peaceful, quiet strike is al- 
ways reprehensible. A suspension of work, either 
individually or in masses, is sometimes the means 
of enforcing the laws of supply and demand when 
wages become too low. When a hundred hired 
men think their wages too low, let them quit, if they 
please, and quietly wait. If the employer cannot 
supply their places at the old rate, he must come 
up to such price as he can hire for. But if he can 
supply their places at his price, then it is clear that 
they are mistaken. They are asking too much. 
The only thing for them to do is to leave entirely 
or go back for the old wages ; for they cannot pos- 
sibly have any claims for more than he can hire as 
good men for. The employer has no claim on them 
for their work, and they have no claim upon him 
for the employment. All rights and claims in this 
behalf depend entirely upon contract, as hereafter 
stated. 

It is clear, therefore, that hired working-men on 



THE TIMES OF 1873-1878. 281 

a strike have no right to interfere with any other 
men who desire to work for such wages as they can 
get, or to meddle with their late employer's busi- 
ness in any way, except by quietly leaving him; 
and that any combinations, strikes, or violence of 
any kind cannot force wages beyond the regular, 
natural, general rate as governed by supply and de- 
mand. And that rate may always be known by 
what another set of men can be hired for. 

6. NO PARTICULAR CLASS IN FAULT. 

For all this general calamity, I do not see that 
anybody is in fault. If it is the fault of any it is 
the fault of all. It is the effect of inexorable 
economic laws upon the facts of our national life 
for the last seventeen years, which we have tried 
in vain to ignore and evade. It is the inevitable 
depression after extraordinary abnormal national 
exertion. 

The only sensible way to deal with this great 
problem of the times, is to accept the situation as 
we find it, and address ourselves to the rational 
remedy ; to accept the fact that in every part of 
the country people are out of work and looking 
starvation in the face, because their particular 
trades are overdone, and not for any other reason ; 
and the only possible remedy is to equalize the 
labor and productions of the country by the idle 
people scattering away upon Lind and cultivating 
the soil ; and idle men, and other working men had 



282 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

much better accept these solid facts of the situa- 
tion than to longer listen to political demagogues 
and office seekers. 

T. But to all this we are answered that there are 
very large 

LIONS IN THE WAY. 

They tell us that "This is pretty hard. There 
are great difficulties in the way of a change of oc- 
cupation and of location. It costs something ; and 
most of idle people have little or nothing to defray 
such expenses with, or to buy land with, or to live 
on while raising a crop," etc., etc. All of which is 
true. And when I am asked how these changes 
are to be made, how poor idle people are to be 
transferred to farm labor, I freely admit that I 
don't know. But all this does not alter the facts 
of the situation. It does not extinguish the solid 
fact that that is the only way to solve the labor 
problem and that it is a perfect philosophical and 
practical solution of it, however hard and difficult 
it may be. It does not alter the fact that idle peo- 
ple must go into farm labor, or remain out of em- 
ployment. It does not justify the idle hungry 
people in lingering around factories, and shops, 
and towns, and railroads, and mines, and clamor- 
ing against employers of labor, and capital, and gov- 
ernment, and listening to political aspirants who 
promise them that voting certain tickets, will, in 
some mysterious way, bring relief for all their 
complaints — set them to work where there is no 



the times of 1873-1878. 283 

work for them to do — set people to hiring working 
men to manufacture goods that there is no market 
for — employ the superabundance of labor in the 
same channels that it has been thrown out of be- 
cause of the superabundance and for no other 
reason. 

Yes, the situation is a hard one, and the remedy 
is difficult. There is no disputing that. It is not 
agreeable to change occupation, but it can be done. 
We see it done, very commonly, in the best of 
times. There is a repugnance to going from a 
shop, or from any town employment, to a farm ; 
but I cannot understand why. To me a well-im- 
proved nice little farm seems the nearest thing to 
a paradise that can be had in this world. To own 
such a property is a laudable ambition for a young 
man ; and any industrious enterprising young 
man can achieve all that if he will. 

Nobody disputes the efficiency of farm labor to 
solve the great labor problem, but there are very 
large lions in the way. Oh dear, poor people can- 
not go to the west ; as if there were no land this 
side of a couple of thousand miles towards the 
setting sun. 

The west is a good place to go to, irrespective of 
any necessity, at any time, of relieving the labor 
market of an abnormal pressure upon it, by divert- 
ing a portion of the hired labor of the country to 
self-employing farm labor ; a good place for young 
men to go to, to lay the foundation of future com- 



284 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONET, ETC. 

petence for themselves and their families. Going 
west is not a good thing to do for the purpose of 
getting a living by doing nothing ; but those who 
accept the necessity of hard work as the founda- 
tion for prosperity, can find in the cultivation of 
the soil, as they go along, compensation, in the 
necessaries of life, equal to the meagre and uncer- 
tain wages of the hireling, and in a course of years 
find themselves the owners of homesteads to make 
themselves comfortably independent. I know 
whereof I write in this behalf, for I have seen it 
done. 

But for all this it is not necessary to go west very 
far. There is land enough in Steuben county to 
be bought on credit, or to be had to work for hire, 
or on shares, or for rent, for every idle man and 
boy in the county to make a living on, to the 
great advantage of the county in general, in the 
improvement of its idle lands. And so as to the 
entire State of New York. She has idle lands 
enough to give employment and a good living for 
all her idle people. But I am asked how these poor 
people are to live while clearing a patch of ground 
and making a crop of potatoes and other food ? I 
will answer by asking how they are to live for the 
same length of time without doing that or any 
other work ? 

In my travels, as I look upon the bountiful crops 
that pervade the county, and upon the idle lands 
in every square mile of territory, that would be 



the times op 1873-18T8. 285 

like fruitful and responsive to the hand of labor, I 
cannot avoid the thought that it is an insult to a 
bountiful Providence to prate of enforced idleness 
of working men, and of starvation. 

8. — NOT OVER-PRODUCTION BUT UNEQUAL PRODUCTION. 

We hear a good deal about over-production. I 
think a general over-production is impossible. 
Equalize the productions of the country, by trans- 
ferring the surplus manufacturing and mining labor 
to agriculture, and then the productions of all can- 
not be too much. 

In times such as we have had , too many factories 
and shops, and collieries, and stores, and houses, 
can be built ; they have been ; and too much coal, 
and iron, and most other manufactured goods have 
been produced ; but if, instead of producing such 
surpluses, a suitable proportion of the working men 
had been drawn off into agricultural pursuits, at 
the proper time, it is self-evident that there would 
have been no surplus of anything, and nobody out 
of employment, and the more they could all pro- 
duce the richer all would be ; at least none could 
work themselves out of a job or out of food and 
raiment. 

Whenever any number of men find themselves 
out of work and cannot find any body to hire them, 
or when there are two men ready for every day's 
work that is offered, it is self-evident that their par- 
ticular trade is over-done, and the only remedy is 



286 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC* 

for half of them to take themselves out of the 
market, and go somewhere upon land, be their own 
employers, and build up for themselves homes 
where they can always produce their own bread 
and butter, despite railroad companies or other 
employers of labor. And then the other half will 
have no trouble in getting satisfactory wages. It 
is idle to think of a superabundance of hired labor 
getting higher wages by any human contrivances. 
In all the history of the world it never has been 
done. It never will be. 

9. — THE REMEDY WILL APPLY ITSELF. 

Such is the remedy for the industrial and busi- 
ness troubles of these times. And this remedy 
will eventually apply itself. The same economic 
law that has forced these people out of their for- 
mer employment will somehow conduct them to 
the only vocation open to them ; for large masses 
of men will not always rely on intangible and false 
political theories to give them bread and butter, 
while abundance of fat soils are awaiting their 
coming to make for themselves independent homes, 
to be their own employers, and to solve the labor 
problem for themselves and for the workingmen 
left behind. Disabuse the working men eveiy- 
where of the false political theories from which 
they are expecting relief , and educate them in the 
laws of nature that God has fixed upon us to gov- 
ern this problem of labor, and the end of these 
troubles will quickly be reached. 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 287 

10. — THE PROOF. 

And now, August, 1879, it is gratifying to see a 

complete verification of the general theory of this 

paper, in the following, taken from a late daily 

paper : 

"There is a growing tendency to take up and occu- 
py new farming lands in the west. For the year end- 
ing July 16,000,000 acres of Government lands were 
taken up by homestead entries alone, and at least 14,- 
000,000 acres of new lands were sold to settlers during 
the same period. Half a million people settled upon 
the new lands in the year 1878. These are figures that 
incontestably prove the steadily growing importance 
of the Great West. They tell of a race of strong, 
hardy people who are emigrating to these lands and 
wresting from the soil its abundant wealth. The 
West is no place for sluggards. The man who goes 
there must go with the determination to work, and if 
he carries out his determination he will become 
wealthy and prosperous, for the West is a bounteous 
mistress to those who wed her properly." 



II. 

THE LABOR PROBLEM. 

The hardship of labor — Capital and labor and the 
rights of each — Corporations — The laws of sup- 
ply and demand must govern — Capital and labor 
not antagonistic — Self-imposed hardships — In- 
equalities — Governmental interference — Hours 
of labor — What capital is and how it oppresses 
labor — Prison labor — Chinese labor. 



1. — THE HARDSHIP OF LABOR. 

We hear a great deal about the hardships of 
laboring people, the oppressions of capital upon 



288 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

them — in the unjust apportionment between capital 
and labor of the values of the productions of the 
country. " Capital robs labor of its rights,'' is a 
very common hue and cry. And it is not uncom- 
mon to hear and read eloquent harangues on the 
hardship — and sometimes it is almost called injus- 
tice — of labor jper se ; as if it were so repulsive, so 
severe, and so unadapted to the constitution of 
man; as if God made such a mistake when He 
fixed things so " we must work for our bread," 
that the laboring man is really to be commiserated, 
and there ought to be some way to relieve him 
from his hard lot. 

But what is called labor in this behalf is limited to 
physical employments only. We hear nothing of 
the hardships of the multitudes of people, not 
called laborers, who work more hours every day 
than any hired "laborers,'' and in pursuits more 
exhausting to the human machine, and more iatal 
to life, than physical labor. The wailings are all 
for the one division of the labor of the world. 

On this phase of the subject there is not much 
to be said. Discussion cannot change the matter 
much. After all that can be said or done, the 
same necessity for labor remains, and we cannot 
help it. And to complain of the hardship of labor, 
per se, is to quarrel with Providence. 

But God has not fixed things so very badly after 
all. To a healthy, vigorous man, and woman too, 
with souls in them, fit to live in this beautiful 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 289 

world, willing to accept this place of probation 
as they find it, any necessary labor is not a 
hardship. The spirit and ambition to do some- 
thing and be somebody — to do something for 
the world for the privilege of living in it, to do 
something for themselves, not only for current 
needs, but for declining years, to do something to 
make the world the better for their having lived in 
it— makes labor easy, makes hard work easy. I. 
know about this. I have been there. Many years 
of cay life were spent in what is called hard work, 
and I know how it feels. I have no bad report to 
make of work. When I was working in a black- 
smith shop fourteen hours a day, steadily, year 
after year, I did not think it was hard. It was not 
a hardship. When I was working on a farm, chop- 
ping timber, clearing land, and doing all the brunt 
of farm labor as it was done forty years ago, with 
physical exhaustion, more or less, every day, it 
was easy. I do not say that I took to that labor 
for its own sake. I do not think that labor is ever 
intrinsically attractive to any man or woman 5 but 
for its results it is quite endurable ; yes, it can be 
made enjoyable ; not only for its personal compen- 
sation, but for the satisfaction of doing a good 
thing — producing values out of nothing. A me- 
chanic puts up a good piece of work, of any kind, 
that will be of utility, or productive of utilities, 
perhaps, to multiply and accumulate indefinitely. 
If he is a real man — ambitious, well-disposed, right 
19 



290 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

thinking, he takes a pride and an enjoyment in Buch 
work that largely counteracts the repulsiveness 
of the labor itself. It is the listless, insipid, in- 
efficient, time-serving, hand-to-mouth class of peo- 
ple — those who think that the world is greatly 
favored by their presence in it, and that the world 
owes them a living, and therefore drift along de- 
termined to do just as little as possible towards 
making their own living — itis this class who always 
have a quarrel with labor. 

2. — CAPITAL AND LABOR, AND THE RIGHTS OF EACH. 

What are the rights of labor, and what the rights 
of capital, in their necessary connection in the 
production of values ? And how are those rights 
to be secured, respectively ? What are the equities 
between the parties ? What the equitable wages 
of labor, and what the equities on the other side ? 
These are questions that periodically agitate this 
country from one end to the other. 

I do not see how there can be any inherent rights 
on one side or the other. All the rights that can 
possibly exist in this behalf are created by con- 
tract. No man has any right to work for any other 
man, or any company of men, only by the consent 
of the other party ; and then he has no right to 
any particular rate of wages, only by agreement ; 
exactly as the employer has no right to any man's 
labor only by his consent, and then only at wages 
that the man agrees to ; so that the right of labor 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 291 

is to make the best bargain it can, the whole world 
to make it in, and to receive the price agreed on, 
exactly as it is the right of a farmer to sell his 
wheat for all he can, and to get his pay for it. And 
the right of the employer is to buy his labor as 
cheaply as he can, and to get good, honest service 
for the money agreed on, just as the miller or the 
consumer has the right to buy the farmer's wheat 
as cheaply as he can, and to get what he contracts 
for. That is all there is of it. And so long as the 
parties are free to contract and to execute, there 
cannot be any oppression or any wrong on one 
side or the other. And this " contest between 
capital and labor" — all the clamor as to the " rights 
of labor" — involves the principle that employers 
are to be coerced, by some power other than of the 
laws of trade and legitimate business principles, to 
make contracts against their will. If they should 
ask the benefit of that rule to be applied to laborers 
we would call it slavery. 

3 . — CORPORATIONS. 

Nor can I see how the workmen of any corpora- 
tion can have any grievances against their em- 
ployers, as it respects the rate of wages. I once 
applied to a rich corporation for employment as a 
blacksmith. I wanted a dollar a day and board. 
The manager replied that there was a great differ- 
ence in men, but he could get plenty of blacksmiths 
for $16 or $18 a month. I did not think that I 
had any grievance against that company, but I 



292 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

went to work at something else. I did not think 
of such a thing as taking forcible possession of 
their shop and compelling them to pay my price, 
as many working men have since done in respect to 
that same company's property. I cannot under- 
stand the grievances of those men unless the com- 
pany were slaves, and bound to employ that par- 
ticular set of men at their own price. 

But corporations are fearful monsters. They 
oppress labor somehow, and are the source of 
pretty much all the poverty and distress that work- 
ing people are afflicted with, as well as various 
other damages to all the world. 

Let us see. What is a corporation ? Simply an 
association of men organized for the purpose of 
massing together money sufficient to carry on en- 
terprises of public utility that cannot be done by 
individuals, and with the same powers that individ- 
uals have for the like purposes. That is about all. 
They have no power over laborers, or poor people, 
that every man does not have. There are many 
living men who remember when a corporation had 
not made this Erie railroad. Will any labor re- 
former say how that corporation has ever oppressed 
any laborer ? Have not its employes always worked 
for it of their own free choice ? And have not all 
other vocations been open to them the same as be- 
fore the railroad was thought of? Are they not 
just as free to go where they please as before ? 

I remember very well when the Lackawana val- 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 293 

ley, where I was born, with all her mineral wealth, 
now of world-wide notoriet} r , was locked in, hope- 
lessly locked in, as it seemed to us then, from the 
outside world. And when we consider that but for 
corporations that valley must ever have remained 
undeveloped, and when we see the great population 
and thrift of that locality now, and consider the 
untold benefits to every part of the country from 
the acquisition of the Lackawana coal ; and all this 
the fruits of innumerable millions of corporate cap- 
ital ; corporations with no more power to oppress 
or injure anybody than has ever} r farmer in the 
land, this hue and cry against corporations seems 
to be the silliest of bosh. 

And then, corporations are monopolies, and so 
they oppress laborers. It would seem that the au- 
thors of this phase of the clamor do not know what 
a monopoly is. The idea that the thousands of 
corporations who hire men — railroad companies, 
coal companies, and all the various manufacturing 
companies — are monopolies in respect to their deal- 
ings with hired laborers, is supremely ridiculous. 
Some thousands of corporate entities, in all 
branches of industry, scattered all over the coun- 
try, and in competition with each other and with 
the rest of the world in the hiring of labor ; and 
they are monopolies for oppressing labor. There 
is no possibility for any such monopoly, until all 
employers combine and are directed by a single 
authority, which is simply impossible. And a 



294 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

principal charge against the railroad companies 
has been that they are not a monopoly, that is, that 
by their ruinous competition with each other they 
have crippled themselves so that they have to re- 
duce wages. 

No ; in this great country, with its multifarious 
business and labor interests, and with its great ex- 
panse of fertile and uncultivated lands, there can- 
not be a monopoly for any permanent oppression 
on one side or the other. The laws of trade will 
prevail in the main, in hiring labor as in all other 
matters of traffic. The great coal combination 
ruled the price of coal for a season, at the cost of 
consumers, and labor unions kept up the price of 
labor meanwhile, but they both broke down ; and 
the war of 1 8 TT, instead of being primarily between 
capital and labor, was the culmination of the war 
between both of these and the inexorable laws of 
political economy — a futile resistance to the laws 
that Nature's God has fixed over us. Both parties 
suffered the penalty of violated law. It is the in- 
evitable reaction from unnatural prices. 

4. — THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND MUST GOVERN. 

The upshot of the whole matter is that there is 
a natural and inexorable law of trade — the law of 
supply and demand — that does, and always must, 
in general, govern the price of hired labor, just as 
it does that of everything else that is bought and 
sold. That law cannot be extinguished by any 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 295 

devices of man. Any artificial obstructions to its 
supremacy can only be ephemeral. 

Whenever the remuneration of hired labor is too 
low, it is the laborers' own fault. They make it so 
by overstocking the market. And the ever ready 
relief is for a suitable portion to retire from the 
competition, and go out upon land and till the 
soil, as set out in my last paper. 

When wages become too low, if the working 
men, instead of organizing strikes and mobs to 
compel employers to pay wages higher than plenty 
of men can be had for, would organize to diminish 
the supply of labor in the market, by sending a 
part of it out upon the land, to be their own 
employers, we would hear no more of the antagon- 
isms of labor and capital. 

Young men, when your wages get too low go 
somewhere and buy a piece of land to make your- 
self a farm of, on credit if need be, or rent it, pitch 
into it for your life-work, and the great problem of 
capital and labor with you will be solved. You 
may be your own capitalist, as well as a laborer. 

5. — CAPITAL AND LABOR NOT ANTAGONISTIC. 

It is also generally understood that capital and 
labor are mutually antagonistic. They are antago- 
nistic just as the farmer and the miller who buys 
his wheat are antagonistic — the one wants to sell 
as dearly as he can, and the other wants to buy as 
cheaply as he can; or as the merchant and his 



296 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

customers are antagonistic — the former wants to 
sell his goods as high as he can, and the latter 
wants to buy as low as he can. This kind of an- 
tagonism exists between all the different classes of 
people and all individuals who deal with each other 
in all the relations of life in civilized society, and 
is no more reprehensible between employers of 
labor and laborers than elsewhere. But I deny 
that there is any other antagonism between capital 
and labor. Every employer must get his labor at 
the current rates — as cheaply as others — or he 
must fail ; he cannot compete with tho?e who get 
it cheaper. But it is not especially the interest of 
the employers of labor, as a class, that the current 
rate of wages shall be low. The wages enter into 
the price of the productions, and so there cannot 
be any antagonism between capital and labor as to 
what the current rate of wages shall be. It is just 
as profitable to the employer that it shall be high 
as low. And more than this, the interests of capi- 
tal and labor are mutual; exactly as all other 
varied interests, as they are intermingled in society, 
are mutual. The farmer wants the mechanics and 
all other vocations in his vicinity to prosper, so 
that he can have ready markets at home at good 
prices, for his produce ; and the mechanics and 
manufacturers want the farmers to prosper so they 
can buy what they need of manufactured goods. 
And so capital, employing labor, wants labor pros- 
perous, intelligent and contented, so as to be skill- 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 29t 

ful, efficient and reliable ; while laborers' true in- 
terests are that employers shall prosper, so as to 
enlarge their business and increase the demand for 
and wages of labor. 

But from all this it is clear that an employer — 
an individual or a company — cannot enter into what 
is called the equities between capital and labor — to 
fix wages according to what may be deemed neces- 
sary for the respectable support of laborers and 
their families, any more than a miller can pay $2 a 
bushel for wheat when the current price is only $1 
— upon the ground that the farmer's family cannot 
be respectably supported at a less price. Such a 
process in any business, is sure to terminate in 
bankruptcy. ]S"o ; each side must be for itself in 
this behalf, and not for the other. The employer 
who hires men for their benefit, and adjusts their 
wages to their needs, irrespective of what they 
earn at the current rates, is sure to fail, and his 
men must come to the common standard at last. 
Business cannot be done on charitable or benevo- 
lent principles. 

Such in brief, are the inexorable laws by which 
hired labor is and must be governed. Whatever 
of hardship there is in this, is not the fault of any 
employing class. 

6. — SELF-IMPOSED HARDSHIPS. 

M In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 
And this is what's the matter. Some people hate 
to work for their bread. But, accepting the neces- 



298 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

sity of so doing, the tendenc}^ is to work just as 
little as possible for it. This is the reason why 
there are so many poor, unprofitable hirelings, and 
why the few good ones are usually the successful 
men. And then there is the disposition to squan- 
der our earnings upon unnecessary indulgences, in- 
stead of saving a portion of them, all along, for a 
wet day or for old age, which I think is the princi- 
pal cause of the hardship of the natural laws of 
trade upon laboring men. Whatever hardship 
there is in continuous labor itself must be endured. 
There is no remedy. As to the incidental hardships 
complained of, I think usually they are self-imposed 
as aforesaid ; for I have seen men working for a 
long course of years at the lowest wages, support- 
ing their families comfortably, always above board, 
accumulating something all the time, and never 
complaining of hardship. And I have always 
noticed that the improvident class of people — 
those who expend all their income, be it more or 
less, — are always in a fret about the hardships of 
labor and the hardness of the times. The times 
are ever hard. The times are out of joint. The 
present time is always especially the worst. In 
days of yore the times were better. And they are 
looking for great things in the times of the future, 
to cure their own deficiencies. Young man, never 
depend on the times to make you, but make the 
times for yourself. Cheerfully accept the times as 
you find them, and make the most of them, and 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 299 

you will never have any reason to croak of the 
times. 

T . — INEQUALITIES. 

And there are inequalities in men, involving 
more of hardship upon some than others. Some 
have to sweat more for their bread than others. 
One man has twice the physical power of another 
— can do twice the work of the other. He can 
earn, and is entitled to, twice the wages, or can 
earn the same wages in half the time. A man has 
the natural aptitude and the practical experience 
for difficult and valuable workmanship. An em- 
ployer can afford to pay him four times the wages 
of a common laborer. He is entitled to it, and no 
one has any right to object. If a lawyer can make 
himself worth to a client a hundred dollars for a 
day's work, he is as well entitled to that as the 
wood-chopper is to the price that he agrees to work 
for. When Jenny Lind could draw such audiences 
that Barnum could afford to pay her a thousand 
dollars a night, she was as well entitled to that 
sum as the blacksmith is to the day's wages that 
he works for. If a railroad president can make 
his services so necessary and valuable to the com- 
pany that they can afford to pay him twenty-five, 
thirty, or forty thousand dollars a year, that is his 
honest money just the same as the wages of brake- 
men, firemen and engineers are theirs, and they have 
no reason to complain of it as long as they get 
what they agree to work for. And yet we hear a 



300 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

good deal of public clamor because railroad officials 
are paid too much and engineers and brakemen too 
little. These inequalities are inherent in our na- 
ture. Their results are unavoidable, and it is use- 
less for any body to fret over it. But in individ- 
ual cases they can be modified to great advantage. 
Industry, enterprise, push and integrity can over- 
come great natural disabilities, while the opposite 
qualities may practically extinguish the most bril- 
liant powers. Many a man of medium natural en- 
dowments has risen to the higher vocations of life 
by the mere force of vigorous work and determina- 
tion ; while stronger men stay at the bottom for 
want of such application. 

8. — GOVERNMENTAL INTERFERENCE. 

There is always more or less demand that the 
government shall, somehow, aid the hired laborers 
of the country to get higher prices for their labor 
than they are able to get in the natural way. 

There is a good deal of truth in the old Demo- 
cratic maxim that " the world is governed too 
much." Aside from the protection to life and 
property, ordinarily there is very little that the 
government can do for the people ; especially as to 
business, etc., the best that it can do for them usu- 
ally, is to let them alone. 

The time has been when governments undertook 
the impossibility of regulating the prices of com- 
modities, but it is now too late in the day for any 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 301 

intelligent writer to insist that any governmental 
power — however absolute — and despotic — can ef- 
fectually repeal or nullify the laws of trade that 
God has fixed upon us, and make any legal prices 
of goods or labor effectual between man and man. 
And yet this is what is expected to be done in some 
indirect way, which must always be equally futile. 
I think all accredited writers on political econ- 
omy and on government are now agreed that all 
that any government can possibly do for the bene- 
fit of labor — unless it be to tax the property of the 
country for the benefit of laborers — is to extend 
its protection to employer and laborer in their free- 
dom to make their own bargains, to enforce them 
and then to let the matter alone to regulate itself. 
Wealth cannot be produced by legal enactment, 
and government has no mysterious power to regu- 
late its production and distribution. It is a con- 
sumer only. Its legitimate duties are very few and 
simple, and they do not consist in providing em- 
ployment for labor, or interfering in any w r ay be- 
tween emploj^er and employe ; and unless other 
classes are to be taxed, directly or indirectly, for 
the benefit of laborers — which would be legalized 
robbery — it is difficult to see what the government 
can do more than to give its protection to all 
classes alike, in " life, liberty and the pursuit of hap- 
piness." And yet we have more or less of attempts 
indirectly to enact by law larger pay to the labor- 
ing class. 



302 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 
9. — HOURS OF LABOR. 

For instance : it is fondly imagined that the legal 
restriction of the hours of a day's work will give 
the laborer the price of ten hours' work for eight 
hours' work. A man's wages must always be, in 
the long run, governed by the amount and value of 
his productions. If one man does twice the labor 
of another his wages will be twice as much, and 
vice versa. And unless eight hours' work will, in 
general, produce as much value as ten hours, it is 
impossible for a laborer to get as much pay for 
eight hours as for ten. To illustrate : Suppose a 
man, instead of working at one trade and exchang- 
ing that work for all other productions that he 
wants, should work alternately, say at cultivating 
the soil to produce his food, and making cloth and 
shoes, and all other commodities that he needs. 
lie works twelve hours a day. Now a law is en- 
acted that eight hours shall be a day's work. Will 
that law enable him to produce as much for himself 
in eight hours as he could in twelve ? Now what 
we call the division of labor — one man working at 
one particular trade so as to be more efficient, and 
selling that labor for all other things that he wants 
— does not chang3 the inexorable law that in the 
production of values a man cannot have any more 
than he produces, save by some species of rapacity 
and wrong. Although the division of labor, and 
the buying and selling of labor, and the exchange 
of commodities, mystifies the subject to common 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 303 

comprehension, }-et it is easy enough to see that 
taking the aggregate of all the laborers, and the 
emploj'ers, and the capital that is at the bottom of 
all production, eight hours of work cannot produce 
as much as ten or twelve, and by whatever rate the 
distribution of the value of the products is made 
among the different parties, the share of each must 
be proportionate to the production ; so that a gen- 
eral reduction of the hours of labor is a reduction 
of the income of all and not of the capitalist 
merely. And equally ineffectual are all other 
devices by which legislative demagogues make 
capital in assuming to control the relations between 
capital and labor 

These public clamors seem to contemplate some 
process by which the unequal accumulation of 
wealth is to be prevented. In this country, with 
no laws of primogeniture, with no entailed estates, 
no land monopoly, with the notorious fact that 
usually no large estates are sustained beyond the 
second generation, it is difficult to see what labor 
reform wouJd have in this respect unless it be the 
abrogation of the right of property itself. This is 
what they mean, to some extent at least, if they 
mean anything beyond demagogism. 

10. — WHAT CAPITAL IS AND HOW IT OPPRESSES LABOR. 

To come down to the initial facts of the right of 
property and the accumulation of wealth : A man 
goes out upon a spot of earth, builds him a habi- 
tation, subdues and cultivates the ground, and 



304 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC* 

makes it to "blossom as the rose." In his lifetime 
of vigor he toils and accumulates value in that 
land, in that it has been made capable of producing 
all that its owner needs and more, without his per- 
sonal toil. His house is all that is to be desired 
for his comfortable, and perhaps elegant, accom- 
modation ; his barns are ample, and altogether it 
is an attractive and luxurious home. It is a ma- 
chine that will care for its maker all along the 
down hill side of life. It is his. No other man 
shall come and drive him away and enjoy the lux- 
urious fruits of that homestead. This is the right 
of property. This is the accumulation of wealth, 
and all there is about it. Whatever other forms 
human exertion takes for individual life-work, it all 
comes down to this at last ; industry, self-denial 
and economy are the only sources of accumulated 
wealth. That farm is what we call capital. That 
man is one of these hated capitalists. He is an 
employer of labor, lives at his ease and fattens on 
the labor of others, as they call it. He may trade 
his farm for railroad stock, and then he will be a 
part of a wicked corporation. In either case he is 
an oppressor of labor, if he hires men for what they 
are worth in the labor market. Or he may trade 
his farm for government securities, and then he 
will be a bloated bondholder, and have nothing to 
do but to cut his coupons, to the great oppression 
of the poor ! 

Another man comes along, as gray-haired as the 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 305 

owner of that home. He has been a life-long 
worker, but he has enjoyed all the fruits of his la- 
bor as he went along — if it is enjoyment to dissi- 
pate all that is earned through all the years of 
vigorous manhood, with the certainty of the dis- 
tresses of poverty in old age — he has no farm or 
other resources to recline upon. He is a reviler of 
the wealthy and a hater of mammon. He thinks 
he has the right to breathe the free air of Heaven, 
to walk the green earth and to partake of its fruits. 
He thinks he has about as good a right to that 
man's farm as he whom the law calls its owner — or 
at least to half of it ; for has he not done as much 
work through life as the other ? And when he fails 
to overcome the prejudices of the law against his 
theory, and the necessity of labor still stares him 
in the face, he is sure that labor has lost all its 
rights, and there ought to be some way to compel 
that rich farmer to pay him more wages than he 
can hire as good a man for. Such is labor reform, 
and such the reasons for it. It is simply the in- 
sane desire to get some of the wicked wealth that 
somebody else has earned and saved. That is all. 

11. — PRISON LABOR. 

Shall there be any labor carried on in the prisons 
so as to bring such labor into competition with 
honest free labor ? 

] think that question is about tantamount to 
this : Shall the plow come into competition with 
honest human muscle in digging up the earth ? Or 
20 



306 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

shall the water-wheel come into competition with 
the tread-mill ? Or shall the steam engine come 
into competition with horse-power and human 
hands? Or shall the spinning jenny come into 
competition with deft human spinners ? Or shall 
the cotton gin come into competition with human 
cotton pickers ? Or shall the printing press come 
into competition with scribes ? Or shall the thous- 
ands of other labor-saving machines be allowed to 
come into competition with the honest hand-labor 
that they have superseded ? 

There always has been more or less of opposition 
to the introduction of labor-saving machines, upon 
the ground that they tend to the injury of the la- 
boring people. But looking back over the ages, 
and looking over the world's condition to-day, with 
the efficiency ot human labor increased a hundred 
fold by labor-saving machines, there never was a 
time when there was not something somewhere, for 
everybody to do to procure the materials of living, 
and there never can be such a time until the pres- 
sure of population, all over the earth, shall be be- 
yond the earth's food-producing power. And it 
may be added, that the condition of all classes of 
people, and civilization itself, have always kept 
pace with the improved methods of labor. 

Well, what of it ? What has all that to do with 
the question of prison labor? It has everything 
to do with it. If somebody should invent a ma- 
chine by which one horse could manufacture all the 



, 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 307 

boots and shoes that Steuben and Chemung coun- 
ties could consume, merely with a boy to feed the 
materials into the hopper, there would at once go 
up a clamor that all the shoemakers in two counties 
were to be thrown out of work, and added to the 
army of tramps, and the machine must be put 
down. I shall not argue the propriety of that 
machine further than to say that the temporary in- 
covenience to the shoemakers, of being thrown out 
of employment, (and it would only be temporary, 
for they could find something else to do) would be 
for the permanent advantage of everybody that 
wears boots or shoes in these counties, in getting 
them cheaper. 

Well, we have a machine at Elmira that will do 
just that. It can make all the boots and shoes that 
two counties can wear out, without any cost for 
labor ; and there is a great clamor because the 
State proposes to use it and throw some shoe- 
makers out of employment. That is to say : there 
are some hundreds of prisoners in the Elmira 
prison who are to be fed and clothed by the State ; 
and the question is raised whether they are to 
work or not. Being thus on the hands of the 
State to be supported anyhow, as between working 
and not working, their work, if they are to be set 
to work — will cost nothing. It is practically a 
machine that will do the work of that number of 
men for nothing. Suppose they are set at boot 
and shoe making, and suppose that all the prisons 



308 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, BTO. 

in the State should do the same. The State could 
just as well afford to give all that work to the 
buyers of boots and shoes, in the price of the 
goods, as to let the prisoners remain idle. Then 
every body who would buy any of those goods 
would profit by that new machine, so to speak ; or 
in other words, by that prison work, in contradis- 
tinction to the barbarous policy of killing off 
prisoners by enforced idleness. 

But the honest shoemakers will then be out of 
employment, we are told. Be it so. If boot and 
shoe making is the best thing for prisoners to do, 
and if the prisons of this State can do all the 
needed work in that line in the State, then let all 
other boot and shoe makers be out of that particu- 
lar kind of work. They have no patent on it and 
no claim upon the State to protect them in it at 
the expense of every body else. When you talk 
of the rights of honest working men in this behalf, 
it is merely a question between one class of work- 
ing men and all other working men ; the question 
whether all working men shall pay a higher price 
for boots and shoes, for the purpose of keeping 
the boot and shoe makers in work out of prison. 

And at the worst this can only be a temporary 
disadvantage to the shoe makers ; for, as we have 
already seen, there is something else for them to 
do ; and it is a clear gain to the whole community, 
to the value of that prison work, that it be 
utilized. 



THE LABOR PROBLEM. 309 

Nor does it matter how it is utilized — whether 
the State sells it out by the day's work to contract- 
ing manufacturers for what it is worth, (and it 
must eventually bring all it is worth if this system 
is adopted) or carries on the work and sells the 
goods for what they are worth ; in either case it 
benefits all the tax payers ; or whether the goods 
are manufactured by the State and sold to the 
people at prices regardless of the labor in making 
them. In any phase that we place it in, the people 
would be benefited by that prison labor to the 
extent of its value. 

On the whole the question is : shall the whole 
people of the State be taxed to support her crimi- 
nals in idleness for the purpose of giving employ- 
ment to free working men in doing the work that 
the prisoners would do for the benefit of the State 
for nothing, upon the fundamental fallacy that 
there is only a limited amount of work in the world 
to do, that a portion of the people must necessarily 
be out of employment, that labor in prisons must 
rob somebody else of just so much labor to do, 
and that honest laborers are better entitled to the 
work than criminals. It is a false philosophy, 
based upon ignorance of the economic laws that 
govern the production of values ; its tendency is 
only to block all progress and improvement ; its 
spirit is degeneracy and barbarism. 

12. — CHINESE LABOR. 

The same principles as before stated apply to the 



3}0 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

question of Chinese labor. John Chinaman is ob- 
jected to because he works too cheaply. A queer 
objection truly, to any person who will take the 
trouble to think on the subject at all. It is con- 
trary to the fundamental principle of political 
economy that the easier and more cheaply all the 
wants of civilized society can be procured, the 
better for the race. While the natural tendency' of 
our nature is to do as little work as possible and 
get as much for it as we can, this objection to 
the Chinese assumes that the true policy for man- 
kind is to do as much work as possible and get*as 
little for it as we can. 

I think it is self-evident that if a machine could 
be invented, or a race of men found that would do 
all the labor that is needed in all this country for 
nothing, it would be a pretty good thing for every- 
body — at least it would be so accepted by those 
who hate to work for their living so badly. It 
would be pretty nearly a paradise for everybody 
but those free laborers or that machine. Then if 
the Chinese will come here and do certain kinds of 
work for one-half of the price that it has been cost- 
ing, thus cheapening the products to that extent, 
that will be a general benefit to that extent, not- 
withstanding the temporary damage to those work- 
men thrown out of employment thereby — tem- 
porary only because it is not a question of just so 
much work to do and who shall do it, but there is 
and always will be work enough for all, as before 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS. 311 

shown in these papers. I think this is about all 
there is of the Chinese labor question* 



III. 

MONEY — WHAT IT IS. 

Money must cost all it is worth — Authorities — 
Money not a mystery — Fiat money — Legal tender 
paper. 



1. — MONEY MUST COST ALL IT IS WORTH. 

The theory that there can be any process by 
which monej- in abundance can be produced easily, 
cheaply, without much labor of any kind, is a very 
taking one. This is quite natural. Money is a 
good thing for every body to have, for the purpose 
of suppling their daily wants. But the idea that 
it is any better to have money cheap instead of 
dear } is a fallacy. Money must cost all it is worth, 
if obtained honestly. To make it cheaply obtain- 
able is to lessen its value, to diminish its purchas- 
ing power. When all can buy cheaply, it must be 
sold cheaply, so that the cheap money will not 
make our labor any more productive of what we 
buy with our money. If by any change in the 
matter of money, dollars should be made twice as 
plenty as now, so as to be obtained twice as easily, 
so that people would give twice as maijy of them 
for a day's work, the workingman would also have 
to give twice as many of them for whatever he buys. 

Neither would that process facilitate manufac- 



312 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

turing or other business enterprises, for it would 
take twice the number of dollars to do the same 
work or business as before. So that, really, the 
only difference between cheap money and dear 
money is that we have to be encumbered with more 
of it in one case than in the other to do the same 
amount of business. 

Money, as money, being the mere medium of 
exchange, it must cost, it always will cost individ- 
uals, in all legitimate transactions, all that the com- 
modities are worth that it will buy — as much labor 
as those commodities cost in labor. And it is really 
no difference what the volume of the money is, in 
the matter of exchanges ; no matter whether a 
bushel of wheat or a day's work sells for one ounce 
of silver, or ten ounces. 

Before the invention of money, commerce and 
trade were of the crudest description. The incon- 
venience and great labor of direct barter of com- 
modities led to the invention of money ; in other 
words, the adoption of something that by common 
consent would be received by everybody in ex- 
change for their particular products that they have 
to sell. Of course it was indispensable that that 
thing to be called money, and to be used as money, 
should have an intrinsic value. It must be worth 
as much as the things that are to be exchanged for 
it ; for a chip could not be made to pass, by com- 
mon consent, for a bushel of wheat, or a bit of 
common stone for an ox, or a bit of sheet iron for 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS. 31& 

a plow, or a piece of paper for a house. In the 
early ages of money, such a way of making money 
was not thought of; and in later times all the 
plausible inventions for making money out of noth- 
ing have failed. 

In the early ages many different kinds of prop- 
erty were used as money — as a medium of ex- 
change — but for centuries gold and silver have 
been adopted by common consent as the principal 
materials for money. The reason for the choice 
will be quite obvious when we consider their pecu- 
liar characteristics, which are indispensable in the 
material for money : 

1. Their value is less fluctuating than that of 
any other commodities ; principally for the reason 
that their volume cannot be suddenly increased or 
diminished, and that their cost of production is 
tolerably uniform ; 

2. They are in demand everywhere, irrespective 
of their monetary character, so that there never 
has been any trouble about the universality of 
their adoption as the material for money ; 

3. Their value is great in small bulk ; 

4. They are easily divisible without waste, im- 
pressible, attractive, and practically indestructible, 
and everywhere and always of uniform quality. 

In consequence of these qualities, these metals 
came to be used as money, independent of the en- 
actments of any government, or any coinage stamp. 
Their value is intrinsic, and they seem to be the 



314 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

natural money of the world. Whether in the form 
of money or not, they are always salable in all 
countries at about their coin value. 

2 . — AUTHORITIES. 

Professor Perry, a standard authority on Polit- 
ical economy, says : 

"Government indeed coins them for the use of the 
people ; but coinage is nothing in the world but a pub- 
lic attest to the quantity and quality of the metal con- 
tained in the coin." * * * " The value of coined 
money regulates itself on just the same principles as 
wheat regulates itself, and governments are as power- 
less to alter the one as the other. Indeed, the coining 
of either metal, by itself, is a matter of quantity and 
quality alone, and not a matter of value at all ; the 
"United States say by law that a gold dollar shall con- 
sist of 25 and 4-5 grains Troy, of which nine parts 
shall be pure, and one part alloy, but of the value of 
this dollar thus coined the law says nothing. It can say 
nothing. The coin is publicly attested, so heavy, so fine, 
and thereafter it takes its chance as to value. All gov- 
ernments have now learned, after oft repeated and al- 
ways vain trials to regulate the value of their coin, that 
all they can do is to regulate the amount and fineness 
of the metals contained in them.' 7 — Perry^s Political 
Economy, pp. 261-2. 

" Gold and silver, as money, have value in the same 
sense and for the same reason as any other productive 
instrument." — id 251. 

" Money makes no alteration in any law of value, 
but merely substitutes for convenience sake in every 
transaction in which it plays a part, a universal for a 
specific purchasing power." — id 231. 

" In one word, value in the form of money is in a 
more available shape for general purchasing, than 
value in any other form. It is different from other 
commodities in just one respect, namely, while they 
have the power of buying some sorts of things from 
some persons, it has the power, derived from the usa- 
ges of society, to buy all sorts of things from all per- 
sons."— id 232. 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS. 315 

"In 1R34, the gold eagle of the United States was 
reduced in weight from 270 to 258 grains, and the alloy 
increased to one part in ten, from one part in twelve. 
This w T as taking out more than six parts of gold out of 
every 100 parts, in all the gold coins of the country. 
Yet the coins bore the same name as before. As a 
medium, their purchasing power was diminished more 
than six per centum." * * * " If for any reason 
an ounce of gold will buy less of other things than 
formerly, the coins cut from that gold will buy less 
than formerly." * * * " When the current dollar 
sinks to one-half, or rises to twice its purchasing 
power, we call it a dollar all the while." — id 244-5. 

I next quote a few passages from Prof. Way- 
land's Political Economy: 

'We do not use them (gold and silver) as a circulat- 
ing medium because we see a stamp upon them, nor 
because government has made them a legal tender, 
but because we know that they represent a given 
amount of value, and we therefore know that we can 
exchange them for the same amount of value, when- 
ever we please. If a bushel of wheat sells for a dollar, 
we know that it costs as much labor to produce a dollar 
at the mine and bring it to us, as to produce a bushel 
of wheat and bring it to us."— p 199 

"The cost or price of the money employed in every 
exchange, is equal to the cost or price of the article 
which is exchanged for it. If a barrel of flour in Lima 
be exchanged for ten ounces of silver, the cost of pro- 
ducing the flour, and of transporting it to Lima, is 
equal to the cost of producing the silver and trans- 
porting it to the same place. If a barrel of flour in 
New York, be exchanged for seven ounces of silver, 
the cost and transportation of the one at the place of 
exchange, is equal to that of the other." * * u That 
this is so is evident from the fact, that if the cost of 
the precious metals change, their changeable value 
varies, like that of any other product. Thus, if new 
and richer mines are opened, so that the cost of pro- 
ducing the precious metals is reduced, the price of the 
precious metals falls. In such a case we receive more 
silver for a day's work, for a bushel of wheat, for a 
pound of wool, or for any other product." * * "If 
the cost of producing an ounce of silver is increased, 



316 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. * 

while that of producing a bushel of wheat remains the 
same, we shall receive less silver in exchange for a 
bushel of wheat. That is, in exchanging products for 
the precious metals, as for anything else, we exchange 
on the principle of labor for labor."— pp 201-2. 

"We see, then, that the exchangeable value of money 
is not derived from its shape or color, from the stamp 
of the mint, or from the enactments of the govern- 
ment; but that, like everything else, it is based upon 
the cost of its production, varying slightly, and for 
short periods, like everything else, with the accidental 
fluctuations of supply and demand. And hence, the 
reason why a man exchanges a bushel of wheat for 
two ounces of silver, and a yard of broadcloth for six 
ounces, is that it costs as much labor and capital to 
produce the one at the place of exchange, as the other." 
— p 203. 

On this phaseof the subject I might quote, also, 
to the same effect as the foregoing, from Say, 
Chalmers and Smith, all accredited writers on Po- 
litical Economy. In fact, it is the unanimous 
voice of all respectable writers on the subject. 

3. — MONEY NOT A MYSTERY. 

The sum total of it all is, then, that there is 
nothing mysterious, or very complicated, or puz- 
zling about this money question. Any body can 
understand it to its foundation ; as follows : 

Money is simply a product of labor, subject to 
exchange for other products, precisely the same as 
are other products exchangeable for each other ; 
with the additional quality that it has a universal 
demand because it is the medium for the exchange 
of all other commodities ; and it is, and always 
must be, worth the same as any commodities for 
which it is exchanged ; and with one more quality ; 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS. 31<f 

that being the medium of exchange, it is necessarily 
used as a measure of value. Without some com- 
mon measure for all values, exchanges would be 
very difficult and troublesome, in the simple matter 
of reckoning or comparison. It might be easy to 
compare a few products with each other for the 
purpose of exchange ; for instance, a day's work 
with wheat, or potatoes with iron ; but to come to 
the multitudinous mercantile exchanges, such as 
buttons for coal, paper for rice, coffee for combs, 
watches for hats, books for shoes, it would be 
practically impossible to have any intelligible sys- 
tem of exchanges. But all products can easily be 
measured by one ; especially the one that is used 
for money. A dollar is so much gold or silver. 
Every other product can be compared to that and 
its value estimated in dollars and fractions of 
a dollar, and then the comparative value of any 
one product with that of any other is easily ascer- 
tained and exchanges readily made, whether money 
is used or not. This is what is meant by measure 
of value. 

Such is money — its constitution, character and 
uses, and all there is of them. 

4. — FIAT MONEY. 

It is proper to remark here, however, that it is 
in the power of government, when not constitu- 
tionally restricted, to give a certain currency to 
substitutes for money, beyond the intrinsic or 
representative value, \>y fiat. 



318 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

Our legal-tender act was of that character. 
Through all the fluctuations in the market value, 
in gold, of the legal-tender notes— from 35 cents 
on the dollar up to par — they were always worth 
100 cents for the purpose of paying debts con- 
tracted prior to the passage of that act, on a gold 
basis and payable in gold. But that the fiat of the 
government did not create any appreciable value 
in the notes is shown by the fact that for any other 
purpose than paying such debts their value fluctu- 
ated according to the fluctuations in the chances 
of the war and the probability of their redemption 
in gold. 

That legal-tender process was simply a forced 
loan. The government said to all creditors, sub- 
stantial^ "whenever any money payments are 
made to you on debts, you shall lend us that money, 
ii e. you shall take our greenback notes that we 
have put upon the market for that purpose ; and 
we pledge the nation to redeem those notes some 
time." 

Such was the law ; and then all debts contracted 
for dollars when dollars meant gold dollars, were 
at once payable in greenbacks worth 35 cents or 
any other price as it happened. It is clear, there- 
fore, that legal tender did not make those notes 
worth 100 cents in gold, but simply compelled the 
creditor to cancel a gold dollar of debt for 35 
cents, or whatever the price of greenbacks might 
be in the market. 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS. 319 

This operated as the grossest injustice between 
debtor and creditor. The debtor having had gold 
value for the debt that he owed, was enabled by 
this law to pay it with 35 cents ; for the nominal 
prices of whatever he produced to buy greenbacks 
with, having advanced as the real value of the 
greenback had gone below gold, it is clear that he 
only paid 35 cents in full for a dollar of debt. 

Such a despotic interference with private rights 
is tolerable only under the sheerest necessity, and 
for the preservation of the government itself, as in 
our case. And for any other purpose there is no 
power in this government to make such a law. 

5. — THE DEGRADING OF COIN. 

Of the same general character is the degrading 
of coins from ahigherto a lower standard. Under 
the fallacy that the government stamp was what 
made the money, governments have assumed to in- 
crease the circulating medium by increasing the 
nominal value of coins — diminishing the weight 
and calling them by the same name. 

The British pound sterling was originally a pound 
— Troy weight — of silver. What is now called a 
pound sterling is about one-third of that quantity 
of silver. The French livre of Charlemagne con- 
tained 12 ounces of fine silver. At the era of the 
French Revolution the livre weighed only one- 
sixth of an ounce. 

These great reductions in the size of coins have 
been effected by a succession of changes, under the 



320 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

idea that the fiat of government would make the 
small coin worth as much as the larger. 

ht The public authority persuaded itself that it could 
raise or depress the value of money at pleasure ; and 
that on every exchange of goods for money, the vaiue 
of the goods adjusted itself to the imaginary value 
which it pleased the authority to affix to it, and not to 
the value naturally attached to the agent of exchange, 
money, by the conflicting influence of demand and 
supply. 

" Thus when Philip I, of France, adulterated the 
livre of Charlemagne, containing 12 oz. of fine silver, 
and mixed with it a third part alloy, but still continued 
to call it a livre, though containing but 8 oz. of fine 
silver, he was nevertheless persuaded that his adul- 
terated livre was worth quite as much as the livre of 
his predecessors. Yet it really was worth one-third 
less than the livre of Charlemagne. A livre in coin 
would purchase but two-thirds of what it had done 
before. However, the creditors of the monarch, and 
of individuals, got paid but two-thirds of their just 
claims; land owners received from their tenants but 
two-thirds of their former revenue, till the renewal of 
leases placed matters on a more equitable footing. 
Abundance of injustice was committed and author- 
ized ; but after all it was impossible to make 8 oz. of 
silver equal to 12."— Say's Polit. Econ., p. 235. 

All such schemes for raising the value of money 
always have been, and always must be futile. Their 
only effect has been legalized fraud and plunder. 
There is no power in any government — there never 
was and never will be — to make one ounce of fine 
silver worth a much as two ounces. And when a 
law says that a creditor shall receive in full for a debt 
payable in pounds or livres, or dollars, coins of 
such denominations containing less of the precious 
metal than the pounds, or livres, or dollars con- 
tained when the debt was contracted, such law is 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS NOT. 321 

simply a fraud — a repudiation of part of the debt. 
That is all. 

In this country at least, as before intimated, 
such a law could not be sustained in the courts. 
And 3*et it is gravely proposed not to scale down 
the coins merely, but to create a national money 
without any intrinsic value whatever, and never re- 
deemable in money of intrinsic value — to create 
money indefinitely, out of nothing, by the fiat of 
the government, and make it a legal tender for the 
payment of all debts, public and private ! 



IV. 

MONEY — WHAT IT IS NOT. 

Paper substitutes for money — The greenback 
scheme — Real money a legal tender naturally — 
Legal tender restriction necessary — A double 
standard impossible — The true theory of coinage 
adopted — The retrograde in coinage. 



1. — PAPER SUBSTITUTES FOR MONEY. 

Having explained what money really is, upon 
principle, and facts, and scientific authorities, I 
may as well explain how it is not, and cannot be, 
what a certain school of philosophers claim for it. 

I can well remember my first ideas of paper 

money when a very small boy. A bank note 

seemed to me to be a wonderful thing. The paper 

was peculiar and rich — the pictures beautiful, and 

21 



322 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

I thought those qualities were what constituted its 
value. I thought that a bank, by procuring that 
kind of paper, and printing that kind of pictures, 
could manufacture good money indefinitely, and 
without any other condition. I presume children 
of four or five years of age have similar ideas now. 
There are some men who seem to be exactly where 
I was then. They thinly that good money can be 
manufactured in any quantity by a mere print on 
pieces of paper. 

Having seen that money is, and must be, a pro- 
duct of labor, costing its possessor the same that 
any other product that it is exchanged for costs its 
possessor, we are now led to the consideration of 
what is called 

" PAPER MONEY." 

In this discussion it is not necessary to consider 
the expediency or inexpediency of banks and paper 
money, but, recognizing them as we find them, I 
propose merely to explain their bearing upon the 
main subject in hand. 

Really there is no money but coin. All so-called 
paper money is only the representative of actual 
money, so far as there is any money value in it. 
We call it money, because it passes from hand to 
hand, fulfilling the office of money. It is con- 
venient to call it so, and it is just as well. But 
that it is not money at all, is evident on its face; 
Take a dollar greenback. It does not pretend to 
be a dollar, but only a promise to pay a dollar. 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS NOT. 323 

What is the dollar that it promises to pay ? Not 
another greenback, surely, but a dollar in coin. And 
so of all bank notes. They are not dollars, and do 
not pretend to be. And the legal tender quality of 
the greenback does not alter the case. That does 
not make it a dollar. A dollar is a certain quan- 
tity of gold or silver. The legal tender law does 
not change the quality of the dollar at all, but 
merely says to every creditor : " You shall take 
those promises for your debts and trust the United 
States to pay you the actual dollars that your 
debtor owes you." In other words, the govern- 
ment, by her sovereign authority, and under the 
inexorable necessity of war, said to her people : 
" you shall permit us to collect your debts, and you 
shall loan to us the avails thereof, and take our 
promise to pay you your dollars at a future time, 
and you shall run the risk of our ability and wil- 
lingness to redeem that promise at some time in the 
future." That is all the money quality there is in 
the greenback. It is the medium of a forced loan, 
merely. And there can be no possible excuse, save 
the necessity of war, for the issue of such paper, 
and none for maintaining it in forced circulation 
after the necessity is past. 

Paper money, then, has no value in itself, and it 
cannot be endowed with any such value by any in- 
genuity or scheme of law. Whatever of exchange- 
able value it has is in consequence of the money 
that it represents, or purports to represent — the 



324 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

promise to pay money and the probability that the 
promise will some time be redeemed. This is ex- 
emplified by our greenbacks. In the darkest period 
of the war they went down to about 35 cents on 
the dollar. And then, as the prospect of the final suc- 
cess of our army improved they appreciated, until 
at the close of the war they were worth about 66, 
Since then, under judicious legislation for the main- 
tenance of the public credit, and the honest pay- 
ment of all public debts, they continued to advance 
until they came up to par a short time before the 
day fixed by law for resumption. 

This representative character of paper money is 
further proven by bank notes. Our National bank 
notes are always at par with greenbacks, whether 
the bank breaks or not, because there is a security 
deposited that always ensures their redemption in 
greenbacks. Under the old State bank system the 
notes of a bank would be at par one day and worth- 
less the next ; for the reason that it would just then 
become known that there was no money or other 
value in the vaults of the bank to redeem them. 

So that, on the whole, paper cannot be made 
into actual money value ; cannot be made into any 
exchangeable value, only as it represents some- 
thing, somewhere, that is pledged to its redemption. 
And no human power can enforce the acceptance, 
as money, of anything devoid of value — intrinsic 
or representative. If a government compel the 
people to accept such stuff in the payment of 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS NOT. 325 

debts, it is simply legalized robbery, and not a 
payment at all. 

2. — THE GREENBACK SCHEME. 

And it is gravely proposed to make actual 
money dollars by printing on pieces of paper : 

" This is one dollar United States legal tender 
lawful money always at par with gold." 

And so for all other denominations ; $5s, $10s, 
$20s, $50s, $100s, $1000s, etc. And then enforce 
it upon the people as the actual money of the 
country, and keep it at par with gold by enacting 
that it shall always be par with gold and shall be 
a legal tender. And with this they propose to 
pay off all the National indebtedness — bonds, the 
present greenbacks, and all other obligations. 

So far as the National debt is concerned, this 
scheme is repudiation, plain and simple ; for it is 
impossible that that sort of stuff could be worth 
any more than waste paper by the pound. But as 
to the effect of so insane a project upon the busi- 
ness and labor of the country, imagination cannot 
conceive the disastrous effects of such a gigantic 
calamity upon all classes of the people. 

This scheme is not entirely new. It has been 
tried repeatedly, though the present philosophers 
have improved upon all former experiments in 
irredeemable paper currency by excluding all pre- 
tense of redemption. 

John Law's Royal Government Bank of France, 
in the year 1718, is an example of a great financial 



326 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

bubble of irredeemable so-called paper money, 
bolstered up with all the legal decrees and penal- 
ties that could be devised, paying off the National 
debt, and creating the wildest mania of specula- 
tion known to history, and finally collapsing in 
general ruin and distress. In four years, the said 
paper money came down to its real value — nothing 
—just what it was worth from the beginning. And 
this so-called money was gauranteed by the State, 
receivable in taxes, nominally redeemable in coin, 
and made a legal tender ; and at one time it actu- 
ally bore ten per cent, premium over gold and 
silver. But it really represented no value ; and 
when this came to be known, it went to nothing. 

And again in H90, France tried another paper 
bubble to relieve herself from financial embarrass- 
ments, in the issue of her famous assignats to the 
amount of 45,500,000,000 francs, and nominally 
founded upon public lands. They were legal ten- 
der, the use of coin was prohibited, a maximum 
pri<^ in assignats for everything was fixed by law, 
heavy penalties, and at last death, were decreed 
against those who refused to receive them at par ; 
but all in vain. After an unnatural circulation of 
six years, with continual depreciation, their life 
went out entirely ; the fate of all paper currency 
not founded on sufficient money value. Prof. 
Perry says : 

"The distress and consternation into which a coun- 
try falls when its measure of value is disturbed and 
destroyed, as it was by the issue of the assignats, is 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS NOT. 327 

past all power of description. There can be no doubt 
that these assignats caused more suffering in the 
French Revolution, a hundred fold, than the prisons 
and the guillotine." 

Another notable example in point is our own 
Continental mone}^ issued by the Continental 
Congress, from 17T5 to 1779, to the amount of 
$200,000,000, which passed at par for a year or so 
after the first emission, but then began to depreci- 
ate, and in less than five years it went to nothing. 

The difficulty in all these cases was not that 
the paper was not nominally redeemable, it had a 
promise to pay on its face ; but that the promise was 
exactly like the promise of a broken bank; there 
was nothing to redeem it with ; and being issued 
in such vast amounts, and so little value received 
for it, that it was really out of the question to 
afterwards make provision for its payment ; or at 
any rate it never was attempted ; so that their is- 
sue was practically equivalent to the issue of 
greenbacks now proposed, i. e., without any prom- 
ise or pretence of redemption ; a violation of a 
fundamental law of monetary science, that to main- 
tain a paper currency in circulation, there must be 
real money at the bottom of it. It must be worth 
the money that it passes for, and value cannot be 
created by legal enactment. A law making power 
cannot make a scorpion into a codfish, a bundle of 
straw into a barrel of flour, or a piece of paper into 
a dollar. And it cannot enforce the exchange of 
anything whatever for more than it is worth. 



328 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

The radical defect in the greenback theory is 
that they expect to create good money out of 
nothing, by law. It cannot be done. And the 
attempt to manufacture money in that way can 
only end in disaster to the country. Working 
men who have been captivated by this easy theory 
of wealth, would do well to slop and think, and 
apply their own common sense to this subject, be- 
fore creating a whirlwind that will involve them, 
with all other business interests, in one common 
ruin. The real working men have nothing to gain, 
but everything to lose by such an overturning as 
the greenback agitation contemplates. 

3. — REAL MONEY A LEGAL TENDER NATURALLY. 

Usually it is not any special legal tender law 
that makes coins of the precious metals legal ten- 
der in the payment of debts. For instance, our 
government coins dollars of gold and silver ; a 
contract is made to pay $100 on a certain day. On 
the day named the tender of a hundred of such 
dollars as were current when the contract was 
made, whether gold or silver, will be a legal tender 
in the absence of any legal tender law, just as a 
debt payable in wheat will be discharged by a ten- 
der of the wheat at the time and place agreed on. 

4. — LEGAL TENDER RESTRICTION NECESSARY. 

But with two or more metals coined into money 
by the government, it is the province of law to say 
which shall not be a general legal tender, and to 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS NOT. 329 

what extent they may be ; t. e. which shall "be the 
regular paramount money of the country, to the 
end that the more desirable metal may not be de- 
monetized by fluctuations in the market value of 
such metals ; for 

5. — A DOUBLE STANDARD IS IMPOSSIBLE. 

It is an impossibility for two kinds of metal 
coins, called dollars for instance, to circulate as 
general money, side by side interchangeably ; be- 
cause of the fluctuations in the market value of 
such metals. The relatively cheaper metal ; i. e. 
the coin that contains the least bullion value to the 
dollar, will always be the principal circulating me- 
dium. The other will retire, because it is worth 
more as bullion than as coin. 

Our first national coinage of gold and silver — 
law of IT 92 — was made on the basis of the relative 
value of gold and silver being one to fifteen ; which 
was supposed to be the true ratio at that time. 
But it was soon found that gold had been under 
valued. The gold eagles were worth more for ex- 
portation as bullion than for circulation at home ; 
and up to the year 1834 American gold coin was 
not known in common use. Neither gold nor 
silver was in any degree demonetized by law, and 
so the cheaper coin was used and the dearer pushed 
aside. 

In 1834 Congress deemed it expedient to change 



330 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

the coinage of gold so as to bring it into general 
circulation ; and accordingly the gold eagle was 
reduced from 210 to 258 grains in weight, with an 
increase of alloy from one-twelfth to one-tenth of 
the weight of the coin ; thus increasing the nomi- 
nal value of gold, in relation to silver, more than 
six per cent. This proved to be an over valuation 
of gold, and the silver soon began to slip away, 
and gold supplied the general circulation. 

6. — THE TRUE THEORY OF COINAGE ADOPTED* 

Finally, after some further tinkering, the govern- 
ment having learned the simple economic fact that 
gold and silver cannot long remain of one relative 
value to each other, and therefore they cannot both 
be kept in general circulation as money, iri 1853 
Congress adopted the very sensible plan of making 
gold the paramount money, with silver as subsidi- 
ary and fractional merely ; this by reducing the 
weight of the half dollar and its sub-divisions so 
that their nominal value should be considerably 
above their real value as compared with gold coins 
— thus preventing their exportation — and by limit- 
ing the legal tender quality of silver to sums not 
exceeding $5. The silver dollars had long been 
out of circulation on account of their under yalu* 
ation, and they were nominally demonetized in 
1873. 

7. — THE RETROGRADE IN COINAGE. 

Thus the matter stood until the recent great fall 



MONEY — WHAT IT IS NOT. 331 

In the value of silver occurred ; when the inflation 
spirit of the country took a craze over silver 
money, which culminated in the foolish Bland sil- 
vel bill of 187 8, providing for the coinage of two 
millions of full legal tender silyer dollars per 
month, indefinitely, intrinsically worth about 
eighty-seven cents in gold per dollar. This would 
inevitably degrade the currency at the rate of 
about thirteen per cent., and drive all gold out of 
circulation, were it not for the provisions of the 
law that the government shall coin them on its 
own account — buying the bullion at the market 
price, and selling the dollars at their nominal coin 
value, in gold or its equivalent, which keeps them 
chiefly hoarded in the treasury, as there is no 
flemand for them at that price. What are forced 
out in payments by tne government, find their way 
back by payments to the government. The fact 
that they cannot be had for less than 100 cents, 
when only worth 87 cents, keeps them in the gov- 
ernment vaults. There is no speculation in them, 
even to pay debts with. 

On the whole the Bland silver bill is a humiliat- 
ing abortion ; a piece of magnificent pettifoggery, 
without a bit of statesmanship or financial skill. 
It assumes to do impossible things — to legislate 
money into the pockets of one set of men without 
taking it out of the pockets of another set ; to 
make 87 cents' worth of silver worth 100 cents ; to 



332 LABOR , CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

make and maintain a double standard of money ; 
in a word, to abolish the inexorable laws of trade. 

No, it cannot be done. You might as well try 
to make two yard sticks, of unequal lengths, to 
measure the same. The only way to get the 8T 
cent dollar into general circulation is to sell them 
cheaper, so that there will be a speculation in 
them in the payment of debts. If the govern- 
ment is prepared for such fraud as that, and for 
the retirement of gold from our currency, that is 
the way to do it ; provided that the legal tender 
clause, requiring the creditor to take a cheaper 
dollar than he contracted for, will stand the test 
of the courts. 

But the honest and sensible way is to back out 
from that grand mistake, melt up the fictitious 
dollars into bullion, and go back to the law of 
1853 ; for at this day and age of the world gold is 
the natural legitimate money, with silver as frac- 
tional money, for change and small transactions, 
overvalued sufficiently to keep it in circulation, and 
regulated by convertibility into gold at the treas- 
ury on demand. This, with a base metal coinage 
of the smallest coins, also convertible, as aforesaid, 
with limited legal tender to all the fractional coins, 
is the perfection of metallic money. And with 
out National Banking system, founded on such 
metallic money, we will have the most perfect cur- 
rency that the world has ever seen. 



INFLATION NOT BENEFICIAL TO INDUSTRY. 333 

Y. 

MONEY — INFLATION NOT BENEFICIAL TO INDUSTRY. 

(Written in 1878, before the revival of business. ) 

Cheap money not desirable — Authorities — Facts of 
the case — The practical proof. 



1. — CHEAP MONEY NOT DESIRABLE. 

The inflation of the currency is advocated chiefly 
for the purpose of benefiting industry ; as if a re- 
dundant currency were any the better for the in- 
dustries of the country. 

In my first number of this series, I demonstrated, 
from reliable statistics, that the panic, commencing 
in 1813, was not caused by any deficiency of circu- 
lating medium, and consequently there is no reason 
to suppose that inflation can cure it. 

In my third and fourth numbers I have shown 
that the project of irredeemable paper, if adopted, 
would extinguish all reliable currency, and be de- 
structive of all the interests of the country. But 
now let us suppose the project to be to inflate the 
currency on a substantial basis ; i. e., to make and 
put into circulation a large addition of good paper 
money, representing real money. I have already 
tried to show that good money cannot be cheap. 
It must cost all it is worth ; t. e. 3 all it will sell for. 
And I beg the reader to bear this in mind all along, 
as an essential factor in this exposition. Money 
cannot be cheap in the sense that wheat, or other 



334 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC 

consumable products, are cheap. With a large 
wheat crop, wheat may fall from $2 to $1 per 
bushel, and we will then get our bread for one-half 
the labor as before the fall. That wheat is really 
cheaper to us because we supply our want of bread 
at half the cost of labor that it cost before. But, 
if by any means, money becomes so plentiful as to 
be procured with half the labor as formerly, that 
is none the better for us, for we only want the 
money as a medium of exchange for other things, 
and not to consume, as with wheat. If we buy it 
with half the labor as before, we must sell it at the 
same rate. When we buy it cheap, we must sell 
it cheap, so that the larger sum is really worth no 
more to us than the smaller sum was before the 
change. Suppose wheat to be $1 a bushel, and 
labor $1 a day. And suppose money to be made 
cheaper, as they call it, by inflation, so that a 
bushel of wheat buys $2, and a day's labor buys 
$2. The working man does not want the money 
to make bread of, or to consume in any way, but 
to buy a bushel of wheat with, and the $2 are 
worth no more to him than the $1 was before 
the change. He will get just the same quantity of 
wheat for his day's work as before ; and so with 
all other commodities that any bo ly wants to buy. 
In other words, while money can be intrinsically 
cheap as a commodit}^ of exchangeable value, it 
cannot be cheap as a matter of money, because it 
is the mere medium or tool to facilitate the ex- 



INFLATION NOT BENEFICIAL TO INDUSTRY. 335 

change of other values, and not the object or end 
of the exchange. Whether intrinsically cheap or 
dear it cannot affect the relative prices of the real 
objects of exchange for which it is the implement 
or tool. It cannot enable the working man to get 
any more bread for his day's work, or the farmer 
to get any more work for his bushel of wheat. If 
cheap money were the ultimate object of desire, 
the iron money ql Lycurgus would be a good thing. 
A farmer would get about a wagon load of money 
for a wagon load of wheat, and a watch maker 
would get a couple of wagon loads for a watch. 
Or, still better, give us the irredeemable greenback 
now proposed, and we would get a wagon load of 
it for a wagon load of waste paper. And if quan- 
titles of money would make us rich, we could all 
get rich quite easily. 

Now, to apply these principles of economic law 
to any industrial enterprises : take any manufac- 
turing firm in Corning ; suppose that in the present 
state of the currency they cannot raise sufficient 
money to carry on the work that they can get to 
do ; and suppose the currency now to be inflated 
— made cheap — so that two dollars can be got at 
the same cost of labor, as one heretofore. The 
wages of labor, all materials, all the means of 
living, etc., will cost twice as much as before, so 
that the work that could be done for $1,000 hereto- 
fore will require an outlay of $2,000, and if the 
firm was not able to carry on their work before the 



336 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

inflation, for the want of money, they will be 
equally unable afterwards. The fact is that if there 
is, at this time, any deficiency of money anywhere 
for needed industrial enterprise, it is because the 
parties have not the means to buy it with, and not 
that the money cannot be had on suitable security ; 
and such infirmity cannot be cured by inflation or 
any other legislation. It is self-evident that if the 
currency were to be inflated as aforesaid, so as to 
require $2,000 to do what $1,000 is now doing, the 
$2,000 would not be any easier attainable than 
$1,000 now. For it is not to be supposed that the 
government, or any money lenders, are to hand 
this money around to people without just as good 
security for payment as is required now ; and pro- 
pert}' holders will not then be any more eager to 
endorse $2,000 notes than $1,000 notes now. 

2. — AUTHORITIES. 

In proof of these theories of money, I quote 
from Say's Political Economy : " Money is a com- 
modity whose value .is determined by the same 
general laws as that of all other commodities ; that 
is to say, rises and falls in proportion to the rela- 
tive demand and supply" p. 226. (That is to say, 
all other commodities fluctuate in money price as 
money fluctuates as aforesaid.) 

u No government has the power of increasing the 
total National money otherwise than nominally. The 
increased quantity of the whole reduces the value of 
every part; and vice versa" p. 227. 

" The value of money, like that of everything else, 



INFLATION NOT BENEFICIAL TO INDUSTRY. 33^ 



is always in the direct ratio to the demand, and in the 
inverse ratio to the supply," p. 231. 

I next quote a passage from Way land's Political 

Economy : 

" To accomplish a given amount of exchange, a cer- 
tain value in money is required, and in ordinary 
times, this value always exists. And, the exchanges 
remaining the same, we cannot employ for this pur- 
pose, more than this amount of value. If a quantity 
equal to one thousand ounces of silver, or of one 
thousand bushels of wheat, be required to perform the 
exchanges of a certain community, we cannot employ 
more than this amount of value. If we increase the 
quantity, we shall only decrease the value propor- 
tionally. If such a country be insulated from other 
countries, and we introduce into its circulation one 
thousand additional ounces of silver, equal to one 
thousand additional bushels of wheat, the value of 
the whole two thousand will be just equal to that of 
the one thousand ounces before; that is, the (gross) 
value will not alter. If, on the other hand, from such 
a country thus insulated, we remove half the circulat- 
ing medium, the remaining half will accomplish the 
purpose of the whole : that is, it will double in value" 
p. 209. 

Next from Prof. Perry's Political Economy: 

" Money is a medium of exchange ; and the ques- 
tion arises how much of it is wanted ? Clearly only 
so much as will serve the purposes which such a me- 
dium is fitted to subserve ; there should be enough 
fairly to mediate between the services actually ready 
to be exchanged then and there, and also enough fairly 
to call out other services, proper and profitable in the 
then circumstances of society, and whose only obsta- 
cle to a profitable exchange then and there, is the lack 
of a facilitating medium. All increase of money be- 
yond this point, which the very nature of money itself 
makes out as the boundary, leads to a diminution in 
value of every part of it, to a consequent disturbance 
of all existing money contracts, to a universal rise of 
prices which are illusory and gainless, to unsteadiness 
and derangement in all legitimate business "j>. 239. 
22 



S38 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

From all which good and standard authorities in 
economic science, my theory is abundantly made 
out that it is not lack of money that has been the 
matter with the labor interests of the country. 

3. — THE FACTS OF THE CASE. 

And then, furthermore, without regard to philo- 
sophic principles, to come right down to substan- 
tial facts ; the depression of industries and busi- 
ness is notoriously not caused by any scarcity of 
money. Go to any suspended manufactory of any 
kind, or any one that has curtailed its operations, 
and inquire into the cause; and it will be found, 
uniformly , that it is not the inability to get money 
to run it, but the inability to sell its productions. 
Go into a town where building is suspended , and 
you will find that new houses are not wanted, and 
not that there is any lack of money to build them. 
There are too many houses already. The coal 
combination, formed to limit the production of 
coal, is not made for the want of money to run the 
collieries to their full capacity, but for the want of 
market for all the coal that they can produce. 

4. — MONEY CANNOT DO IT. 

Money cannot set people to work where there is 
not something to do to produce something that 
somebody wants to buy. Offer a Corning manu- 
facturer $10,000 at one per cent, interest and he 
would not take it to invest in manufacturing some- 
thing that he cannot sell. Every Corning manu- 



INFLATION NOT BENEFICIAL TO INDUSTRY. 33$ 

facturing firm could double up their working force 
in a week if they could get the work to do. And 
so it is every where. It is not the lack of money, 
but the lack of orders for work, that is the mat- 
ter. I am credibly informed that a large Elmira 
manufacturer is to-day, borrowing all the money 
he wants at four per cent, interest. 

With any amount of idle money, nobody can af- 
ford to manufacture goods that will not sell, or 
build houses that are not wanted. 

And the lack of buyers sufficient to keep all the 
factories and all the working men in full work was 
not caused by deficiency of money ; for the de- 
ficiency of markets commenced, not in 1813 when 
the bubble broke, but years before that, in the time 
of the highest prosperity, when every body was 
employed at the highest wages, and everything was 
going on swimmingly, when stocks began to accu- 
mulate beyond the wants of the country by reason 
of the super-abundance of industrial enterprises 
other than in agriculture, as set out at large in my 
first number. 

On the whole, therefore, it is entirely clear, 

1st. That the fundamental idea of irredeemable 
paper would be legalized robbery simply, so far as 
legal enactments should enforce any circulation of 
such worthless stuff, and fraught only with disaster 
to all the interests of the country ; 

2nd. That there is and has been no deficiency of 



340 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

circulating medium for all purposes of all the pro- 
ductive and commercial interests of the country ; 
consequently, 

3rd. That there is no occasion for any inflation 
of good money for the benefit of any industrial in- 
terests ; and finally, 

4th. That the idea that the working men of the 
country can possibly be identified, in interest, with 
these wild money theories, in any way, shape or 
manner, is a delusion and a snare. 

Workingmen,the economic doctrines that I have 
laid down for your instruction in these papers, are 
the laws that the experience of all ages of the 
world has demonstrated to be correct. They have 
been jotted down by the ablest experts from age to 
age. You have them as the concentrated wisdom 
of the world, and not as theories of mine. They 
are the laws that God has fixed over us, and not 
human expedients or human power can repeal them. 
Study them well, and let your lile be guided by 
them, in your work and in your politics, instead of 
vainly attempting to resist them, and all will be 
well. 

5. THE PRACTICAL PROOF. 

And now, August, 18T9, it may be added that 
the general revival of the industries and business 
of the country, under resumption of specie pay- 
ments, is practical proof of the foregoing theories, 
written in the darkest time of the panic. And yet 
the clamor for inflation goes on. 



GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 341 

VI. 

MONEY — GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 

Sow and why the National Banks were instituted 
— A great hit — Easier elasticity suggested — Sub- 
stitution of Greenbacks for National Bank 
Notes — Double interest — Government business 
for profit — The other side considered. 



1. — HOW AND WHY THE NATIONAL BANKS WERE 
INSTITUTED. 

There is a moderate grade of greenback money- 
men, who do not believe in the wild theories of the 
irredeemable paper inflationists, but do believe in 
abolishing the National banks and issuing green- 
backs to supply the country with all needful 
paper circulating medium in place of the present 
National bank notes ; that is to say, as I suppose, 
to issue good greenbacks, redeemable in money, 
and not an irredeemable paper to be called abso- 
lute money, to be endowed with inherent value by 
calling it value, as the boy said when his father 
asked him how many legs the calf would have, call- 
ing the tail one ; u five, father." " Oh, no, my son, 
only four, for calling the tail a leg does not make 
it a leg." And so this moderate sentiment does 
not propose to create good dollars by merely call- 
ing valueless things dollars, but to issue a currency 
exchangeable for dollars. 

Preliminary to the discussion of this subject, I 



342 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

will state briefly the origin of the National banks. 
The government was fighting for existence. Its 
credit was exhausted and it had to fight on credit 
or go down. The experience of the world had 
demonstrated that it could not go through by 
merely printing stuff called money. $2,500,000,000 
of mere government currency would not have been 
worth anything. By the great skill of Secretary 
Chase a combination of government legal tenders, 
long bonds, and National banks was made, the 
National credit was restored and sustained and 
we went through. That is to say : legal tenders 
ftrere issued to a moderate amount, bonds were 
issued for the residue of our needs ; and to float 
the whole the National banks were invented, 
founded on both legal tenders and the bonds, in 
order to put the wealth of the country to the bot- 
tom of it all — to make it for the money interest of 
the country to own National bank stock, and for 
the interest of the National banks to sell the 
bonds, and to keep them up, and finally for the 
interest of every body to carry the war through 
and keep all the government obligations good. 
Altogether it was a wonderful invention, — never 
surpassed in the history of the world. It almost 
did the economic impossibility of making good 
money out of nothing by legislation. 

2. — THE NATIONAL BANKS A GRAND HIT. 

But that great scheme of finance was based upon 



GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 343 

promises to pay, and sustained by maintaining the 
ability and willingness of the government to pay, 
and not by the fiat of law. And beyond its grand 
success as a war measure, it was a great hit on 
banking per se. It is the most successful and val- 
uable system of paper money that ever was inven- 
ted. Let any business man refer back to the da}^s 
of State bank currency, with all its inequalities, 
annoyances, uncertainties, hazards and actual 
losses — which I need not describe in detail — and 
compare it with this system of sound, stable, uni- 
form currency, every bill of it, from any quarter 
of the Union, equal to gold everywhere in the 
Union, as it is now, a currency which has never 
cheated a holder a dollar in the sixteen years of its 
existence ; and he will appreciate the value of 
National Banks, and the ease and cheapness with 
which the financial part of any business is now 
conducted. But the younger portion of business 
men never can really understand this unless the 
insanity of the times should revive the State bank 
system. 

3. — EASIER ELASTICITY SUGGESTED. 

So long as we are to have paper money at all, 
there never can be much improvement on this Na- 
tional banking system. With direct convertibility 
into coin, and a slight amendment, for easier elas- 
ticity, it will be a perfect paper money banking 
system. This improvement, for which I am in- 
debted to Quincy W. Wellington, Esq., a shrewd 



344 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

and far-seeing banker of Corning, is as follows: 
For instance : A national banker in Minnesota 
wants an extra fifty thousand dollars to lend to 
his customers for forty days, to move the crops of 
the locality. He has his four per cent, bonds to 
deposit for that amount of currency. He only 
wants it for forty days, and then he will want to 
exchange back for the bonds, for he cannot afford 
to keep idle currency. Well, all this can be done 
under present laws ; but with only one office and 
depository for this business for the whole country 
it takes too long to make such transfers. When 
an emergency occurs a banker wants such a con- 
version made in twenty-four hours instead of a de- 
lay of many days as now. The change proposed 
is to establish a depository at every considerable 
commercial centre throughout the country for the 
exchange and transfer of bonds and National Bank 
currency, as aforesaid ; so that any amount of Na- 
tional currency can be commanded for any and 
every possible need of industry and business on 
the shortest possible notice, for a longer or shorter 
time, and to be retired speedily when no longer 
needed. 

With such an amendment to the law the world 
has never seen a paper currency system to com- 
pare with what our National Banks will be. 

And when inflation of the currency is demanded, 
sufficient for the wants of business, as the sa}dng 
is, this National Banking system does just that 



GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 345 

exactly. With the creation of this Bank paper 
free, save only that it shall be made secure, and 
with freedom to retire it too, there cannot be a 
monetary system more perfectly adapted to the 
wants of business. It will always supply the ex- 
act amount of currency needed. The self-interest 
of capitalists will regulate it. 

4. — SUBSTITUTION OF GREENBACKS FOR NATIONAL 
BANK NOTES. 

Now to return to the main question in hand— 
the question whether this banking system should 
be continued. With a good deal of pertinacity 
this plausible theory is urged : The National bank 
notes are secured by deposits of United States 
bonds, and issued on their credit, the bank draw- 
ing interest on the bonds, and also lending out, 
upon interest, the notes that thus represent the 
said boncte,and enabling the banker to realize a 
double interest on the capital. And why not — 
they ask — issue an amount of greenbacks equal to 
the National bank notes, surrender to the banks 
their bonds, retire their notes, and then, with the 
said greenbacks, buy their value in bonds, and 
burn them, and let the greenbacks go into circula- 
tion and save the interest now being paid to the 
banks on said bonds ? 

Now, superficially, that looks like a good thing 
to do. But I think it lands us right into the lab} r - 
rinths of the insane theories of creating values and 
paying debts by hocus pocus, or of repudiation, 



346 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

which ever you please to call it. The bonds pro- 
posed to be retired are a fair and honest debt that 
must be paid ; and the only way to get rid of the 
interest is to pay them up when payable, or buy 
them up in the market — mind that I am now argu- 
ing on the theory of honesty and not that of any 
repudiation scheme. Now, if we could pay up by 
issuing greenbacks to buy the bonds with, without 
incurring another debt, that would certainly be 
very nice ; but the payment would only be like the 
man who gave his note for a store debt, saying : 
"there, that debt is paid." The exchange of green- 
backs for bonds is only an exchange of one form of 
debt for another, and not a payment, exactly as in 
the case of giving a note for a debt previously ex- 
isting. 

" Admitting all that to be so, greenbacks do not 
bear interest, and by exchanging: a non-interest 
bearing security for interest bearing bonds, we 
will surely save the interest," we are told. 

Let us see about that. That theory pre-supposes 
that the matter is to be ended when the greenbacks 
are issued and the exchange is made ; that the 
greenbacks will then take care of themselves, cir- 
culate as money indefinitely, without any further 
trouble, or volition, or expense by the government ; 
that the debt will then be paid and the transaction 
ended. Don't you see that this is the exact theory 
of the wildest of fiat moneyism — that the green- 
backs are to be absolute perpetual money, never 



GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 34T 

subject to redemption? And the greenbacks that 
we are considering, as substitutes for National 
bank notes, are to be promises to pay, and re- 
deemable. 

We may assume, then, that the greenbacks pro- 
posed to be exchanged for the National bank 
notes must be equal to those now in circulation ; 
i. e., payable in specie on demand, and by such 
exchange the government simply resolves itself 
into a bank of issue, with all that that implies. It 
must keep up the credit of its bills by promptly 
redeeming them on demand ; to this end it must 
keep open banking houses at all commercial cen- 
tres, and keep sufficient amounts of coin at all 
times for that purpose. What amount of coin in 
proportion to the bills issued this would require I 
do not know ; but whatever it is it must be pro- 
cured by incurring interest paying debt or taken 
from current revenues which might otherwise go 
to extinguish interest paying debt. In either 
case that must be an offset, so far as it goes, 
against the interest saved by the issue of the bills. 
And ] do not know how much the expense of this 
system of banking would be, in the way of all the 
high-priced men, and the palatial appliances sup- 
posed to be necessary in high-toned banking; 
which must also be an offset against the interest 
as aforesaid. 

5. — DOUBLE INTEREST. 

Now let us go back to the National banks. 



348 



They tell us, with ever so much holy horror, that 
the National banks draw interest on the bonds 
upon which their notes are issued, and also upon 
their notes when they lend them out in their busi- 
ness, so that they get double interest on their 
capital. This is nothing new. Probably there 
never was a bank of issue in this country that did 
not have a similar privilege. The old-fashioned 
State chartered banks were allowed to issue and 
lend out three or four times the amount of bills 
that they were required to keep of specie in their 
vaults. The improved New York system, by 
which bonds and mortgages and public stocks 
were made a basis of security for bank bills, was 
identical in this respect with the National banks. 
The banks received interest on the securities and 
also on their notes based upon them. And it may 
be remarked that without some such advantage as 
this no banks of issue would ever be instituted ; 
for nobody would be fool enough to incur the 
expense of a bank for the purpose of issuing bills 
to the mere amount of capital invested, with no 
other profit on the issue than the interest on such 
amount. It is easy enough, and much cheaper, to 
get that interest without a bank. 

6. — GOVERNMENT BUSINESS FOR PROFIT. 

Returning to the question of government bank- 
ing : it is to be observed, further, that in this pro- 
ject the government cannot lend out its notes and 
receive interest on them, as the banks do, because 



GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 349 

they are to be exchanged for the bonds on which 
the interest is to be saved by the process, so that 
that interest is all the profit that can accrue from 
the issue of the notes, to offset against the interest 
on the hoard of coin necessary for creditable and 
successful banking, and all the other expenses be- 
fore alluded to. The bills redeemed in the regular 
course of business would have to be re-issued for 
the purpose of keeping up the coin reserve some- 
how and not lent out upon interest. 

This matter then resolves itself into a question 
of the government's going into business for profit 
— to earn the money wherewith to pay the interest 
on some $350,000,000 of bonds, and not a mere 
swapping of government circulating notes for that 
amount of bonds. And when we come to that, I 
need not say that it is at least problematical 
whether that business would produce any net profit 
or not — whether we would save any interest after 
all. And if it is to be the policy of the govern- 
ment to embark in business for the purpose of earn- 
ing money, banking is not any more suitable en- 
terprise for the goyernment to make money at than 
merchandise, or manufacturing, or agriculture, or 
house "building, or any other productive enterprises. 

I will drop this subject here, for it is not neces- 
sary to make an argument to prove that such busi. 
ness is not what governments are for. 

T. — THE OTHER SIDE CONSIDERED. 

Some otherwise very sound men on the money 



S50 LABOR, CAIirAL, MONEY, ETa 

question and on National finance, do not like to be 
convinced that the government cannot as well as 
not profit largely by substituting greenbacks for 
the National Bank currency ; i. e. by saving the 
interest on a corresponding amount of bonds. 

To begin at the bottom of the subject, then, the 
first point of argument of the other side is that the 
notes are to be based upon the credit of the gov- 
ernment ; that credit is based upon the entire prop- 
erty of the nation — not only that belonging, tech- 
nically, to the government, but all taxable property 
of all the people ; so that the security for a gov- 
ernment paper circulating medium, is of the 
amplest kind, and such paper will always be ac- 
cepted by the people, irrespective of its payment 
or any provision for payment. 

Now, to go down to the very elementary princi- 
ples of business, without puzzling over any mys- 
teries of finance or banking, it may be stated as a 
sound proposition that no business whatever, pub- 
lic or private — individuals, corporations, or gov- 
ernments — can be sustained continuously, for any 
great length of time, upon credit and security with- 
out payment. How long will a man's credit last if 
he never pays ? And what is the security for but 
for compulsory payment ? In fact, security, apart 
from a provision for payment, is an impossibility. 
The idea is nonsense. 

A business man takes a customer's note, with 
ample real estate or other security. When it be- 



GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 351 

comes due, the creditor, if not pressed himself, 
will perhaps waive immediate payment, for the 
debtor's accommodation ; but if the latter should 
claim that he need not pay at all, for the reason 
that the debt is secured, he would soon find that 
the security does not take the place of payment. 
It cannot answer the purposes of the creditor, in 
paying his debts, or in making his investments. 
It is of no possible use only in view of payment. 
Payment is the fundamental factor of all business • 
and when we are told that the government can is- 
sue $350,000,000, or so of greenbacks and keep 
them afloat continuously without payment, the 
very groundwork of all sound business principles 
is ignored. The fact that bank creditors are all 
sure to want their money when the security fails, 
but do not all want it so long as the security is 
good so that they can get it when they do want it, 
is not a solution of the difficulty of doing business 
without paying. The creditor of a bank cannot 
be satisfied whether he needs his money at once or 
not, until assured that the bank is ready to pay. 
Security without paying cannot be satisfactory to 
the creditor, and cannot sustain the credit of the 
bank. And in the case of the government it is an 
entire fallacy. There can be no property security 
for the payment of any government debt. When 
you talk about the property of the nation being 
security for a government paper circulation, or for 
anything else, it must be borne in mind that that 



352 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

security all depends on the willingness of the 
powers that be to pay ; for the government cannot 
be sued and a debt collected against her will, as in 
the case of individuals. 

And then, secondly, this matter of payment in- 
volves the necessity of values to pay with. If I 
owe a debt, I cannot extinguish that debt, honestly, 
without passing to my creditor some valuable thing 
corresponding with the amount of the debt — equal 
to the value of the things that the debt was con- 
tracted for. 

And thirdly, values cannot be produced by any 
financial legerdemain. I cannot extinguish my 
debt by giving my note. There is no inherent 
value in that, more than in any other piece of 
paper. If there be any exchangeable value in it, 
on account of which my creditor will take it, for 
the time, he takes it only as an evidence of debt, 
and the representative of valuable things that he 
supposes I will be possessed of when the note 
becomes due, and out of which he expects to get 
good and honest value for the debt. I cannot 
create values by merely saying that worthless 
things are worth a bushel of potatoes, a bushel of 
wheat, a dollar, or a thousand dollars. Calling a 
calf's tail a leg cannot make it a leg. 

In these respects the government has no myste- 
rious power more than an individual has. What- 
ever its needs are, in the way of values, it must 
give values for, if it is to maintain its reputation 



GOVERNMENT BANKING VS. NATIONAL BANKS. 353 

as an honest government. It can acquire such 
values by exercising its power of taxation in 
various ways, and I do not say it cannot acquire 
them by engaging in agriculture or merchandise, 
or banking ; but it cannot create them by the 
word of its power, any more than I can. It can- 
not create a bushel of wheat by saying that chips 
are wheat. It cannot create a dollar by printing 
on a piece of paper that "this is a dollar, " or by 
printing or writing a promise to pay a dollar. All 
the value there is in this is the dollar that it is 
supposed to represent and that is to be paid for it 
some time. 

The fatal fallacy of this phase of greenbackism 
is that the issue of greenbacks to supersede the 
National bank currency can somehow be made to 
operate as a pajanent of an equal amount of bonds ; 
whereas the controlling facts are that the bonds 
are an honest debt incurred for honest value, and 
can be extinguished, honestly, only by rendering 
equal value ; that until so extinguished the inter- 
est must be paid in value ; that such values cannot 
be created by law, but the government can only 
procure them by taxation or by earning them 
somehow; that the exchange of greenbacks for 
bonds is not an extinction of the debt, but the cre- 
ation of a new liability in the shape of circulating 
notes payable on demand in coin, if honest green- 
backs, which are to be kept afloat precisely as 
bank notes are kept afloat — by payment on de- 
23 



354 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

mand, and re-issue, and by all the ordinary appli- 
ances of banks of issue. In a word the govern- 
ment is to be a vast bank of issue, furnishing the 
country with its paper circulating medium, pre- 
cisely as any other bank or banks would furnish it ; 
i. e., by a continuous business, just begun when 
the notes are put into circulation. This is the ser- 
vice by which the interest on the bonds is to be 
saved — precisely the same that any bank of issue 
performs to earn money for its stockholders ; and 
it amounts to just this : that the government goes 
into the banking business to earn money to pay 
the interest on a portion of its bonds ; or, if you 
like it any better, performs a service to the public, 
and incurs expenses, in lieu of paying said inter- 
est ; no matter which we call it. 

And now, in conclusion, without raising the 
question of the expediency of the government's 
embarking in speculation or business enterprises of 
any kind for profit, in view of what we have seen 
in these five or six years especially, and what we 
always see more or less of — the wholesale robber- 
ies of the largest money institutions by trusted 
agents, even where under the interested eyes of 
their owners ; and of the innumerable failures of 
such institutions everywhere, by various causes, 
who can say that it is not cheaper to tax the peo- 
ple to pay the interest on $350,000,000 of bonds 
than to tax them to pay the expenses, and the 
stealings, and the losses that are inevitable in such 



THE BONDS AND BONDHOLDERS. 355 

a gigantic system of government banking, without 
the self-interest of an owner any where as a regu- 
lator. 

And then when we consider the instability of a 
currency issued by a single great government bank, 
manipulated by politicians in Congress, fluctuating 
as political administration fluctuates, and not reg- 
ulated in any respect by the real needs of business, 
as it could not be then, with the resulting insta- 
bility of mone} r values, the damage of such a cur- 
rency to the whole country, in comparison to the 
present system, would be incalculable. 



VII. 

THE BONDS AND BONDHOLDERS. 

What the bonds were for — The bargain — The 
greenback claim — The tax question — Clamors 
answered. 



I have no vindication to make for the bond- 
holders. They do not need any. This chapter is 
written for the instruction of that class of people 
who have been deluded by the clamors of dema- 
gogues against the government bonds and their 
owners. 

This denunciation of the bonds and bondholders 
implies that the bondholder is a public enemy, and 
the bonds his weapons by which he has all along 
been destroying the prosperity of the people. 



356 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

Why? What crime are these bonds and their 
owners tainted with ? Let us see. 

1. — WHAT THE BONDS WERE FOR. 

The Nation was in a deadly war for its life — the 
most gigantic war of modern times. The struggle 
was a doubtful one. As in all great wars, the gov- 
ernment was compelled to fight the battle out on its 
credit. The alternative was upon us to borrow 
money to prosecute the war and maintain the 
Union, or give up the contest and let the Union 
go. Then, as now, there was a clamor, long and 
loud, against Government bonds and against 
greenbacks too, not however, that the takers were 
bloated then, or would be, from any profits to be 
derived from investments in their government to 
aid in saving its life-blood from running out ; not 
that they were to derive any advantage whatever 
from the hated bonds ; but that the bonds were 
worthless and the buyers were fools for buying 
them at any price. Yes, I remember those times, 
and I remember who it was that led that factious 
opposition to the bonds, and the greenbacks, and 
all other successful financial measures. It was not 
those who were aiding in any way to suppress the 
rebellion. Their efforts were unceasing to prevent 
men of money from buying the bonds ; not that 
they suggested any better way to provide the 
sinews of war, but because there was no other way, 
and to defeat the sale of bonds would be to assure 



THE BONDS AND BONDHOLDERS. 35 T 

the success of the rebellion. Such was the origin 
of the war upon the bonds. 

But they failed. The mass of Northern capital- 
ists — large and small, Republican and Democratic 
— put their faith in their government, and so they 
took the risk and advanced the money on the gov- 
ernment's promises, and the Union was saved. 
Such is the crime that the original bondholders 
were guilty of. But we are told, with ever so much 
holy horror, that the bonds were bought with green- 
backs, which were at a large discount at the time, 
and so the holders are profiting by the necessities 
of the government, if they are to be paid in coin. 

Now the question is : must this great government 
of the United States, this government of forty 
millions of people, after the successful resistance 
to the serried hosts of the enemy that for four 
bitter years battled to crush it out, after fourteen 
years, since then, of honest faith to every obliga- 
tion, and thus maintaining a public credit never 
surpassed, under similar circumstances, since gov- 
ernments and wars were invented, is there any 
necessity now, for this government and this people 
to plead baby upon their contracts of indebtedness 
by which all that was done, by which we live and 
have a being as a nation to-day ? 

2. THE BARGAIN. 

Was there anything unfair in the bargain ? Let 
us see. The Nation was in deadly peril. It had 
the patriotic men to fight the battle out. It was 



358 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

on its knees to the money world — to the Shylocks, 
if you please, and it is a good thing that there were 
Shylocks then — on its knees for money, money, 
money. It had naught to offer for it but its pledge 
of honor that never had been forfeited, its pledge 
that if not overpowered by the enemy the paper 
promises would be redeemed. The bond buyers 
took the risk — the risk of rebel success and national 
bankruptcy, and also the risk of subsequent dis- 
honesty and repudiation. 

For all that risk, and for their money, did the 
moneylenders get too good a bargain? In the 
first place the chances were about even that they 
would lose it all by the failure of our arms. And 
now let us see what the bonds cost them— say they 
were all rich money lenders, if you please. " Oh 
they paid for them in greenbacks at par ; and green- 
backs were a good deal below par," we are told. 
Yes, they paid in greenbacks, but what did the 
greenbacks cost them ? When the greenbacks were 
issued the Shylocks had their money invested 
somewhere, for it is not supposable that they were 
keeping it idle. Somebody owed it to them in 
coin. Then the government stepped in with its 
legal tender law, and said to them: " Mr. Shy- 
lock, you shall take these greenbacks for all debts 
owing to you at par. We know that your contracts 
call for gold, or silver, but our national necessity 
and the laws of war are higher laws than money 
contracts, and we have been compelled to issue 



THE BONDS AND BONDHOLDERS. 359 

these paper promises to raise supplies for our 
starving soldiers, and to pay their wages, and to 
procure other indispensable material of war ; and 
to give them currency it was necessary to give 
them this legal tender character." 

And thus it was that rich men with money 
owing to them, profited by buying bonds with 
greenbacks. However much the greenbacks de- 
preciated in purchasing power they never depreci- 
ated at all in debt paying power. Debts contracted 
on a gold basis were always receivable in green- 
backs, so that the bonds originally purchased by 
the rich actually cost dollar for dollar in gold ; and 
if eventually paid in gold, principal and interest, 
the buyers will come out exactly even — all the risk 
thrown in. 

And now, on looking back over all those trans- 
actions, in those dark and gloomy and doubtful 
years, and entering into the spirit and feeling of 
those times, so nearly as now we can, as they were 
upon all true and loyal manhood all through those 
bloody days, and considering the money cost of 
those bonds, it is easy to see that it was patriot- 
ism more than business and money making princi- 
ples, that incited their purchase. Yea, well do I 
remember how it was understood, all through the 
war, that the money men were risking their money 
for their country, even as the patriotic young men 
risked their lives. And therefore, beyond the 
exact terms of the money contract, we owe to 



860 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

every man, woman, and child, Democrat and Re- 
publican, who then invested any amount of money 
in those bonds, a debt of gratitude for their indis- 
pensable aid in saving their country. It required 
patriotic money as well as patriotic muscle to put 
down that rebellion, and there was patriotism 
enough in the money of the country to take its 
share in the work, in spite of all the assurances 
of the other side that the money would be lost. 

Such is the advantage that the loyal capitalists 
of the country took of the necessities of their 
country. Such is the way that they speculated. 

3. — THE GREENBACK CLAIM. 

And now (Oct., 1879), as to the claim of a polit- 
ical party, not yet quite dead, that the bonds were 
originally and are now payable in greenbacks, and 
should be paid by an issue of greenbacks for that 
purpose at once. It is alleged that the contract 
somehow implied such payment as that. Let us 
see. It is not necessary to recite the various laws 
under which the bonds were issued ; but what do 
the bonds call for ? The government reached out 
after the money of the people, by all possible 
agencies, saying to them, "bring us your money, 
or whatever we have compelled you to take for 
money for the time being, and in twenty, forty, or 
fifty years, we will repay you in dollars, with in 
terest, and your claim upon us shall not be taxable. 
Whereupon the bargain was consummated by the 
delivery of the money, and the issue of the various 



THE BONDS AND BONDHOLDERS. 361 

promises to pay dollars. That is a fair and honest 
bargain by competent parties ; and there is noth- 
ing in any law contrary to it. The holder of a 
bond is entitled to receive just what it calls for, 
and when it calls for it. Every honest man of any 
party will agree to this. Then what is the dollar 
that is meant when it is said, "the United States 
will pay- one hundred dollars ?" What is a dollar ? 
A promise to pay a dollar cannot be a dollar ; and 
so the present greenback, being a promise to pay 
a dollar, is not the dollar that it promises to pay. 
The greenback promise to pay a dollar cannot 
mean to repay another greenback. That would be 
nonsense ; for why change at all, if the change is 
for another just like the first ; and then it is clear 
that the promise on the bond to pay a hundred 
dollars does not mean to pay $100 in another 
promise to pay $100. Who would take a note of 
the best man in Corning payable in a year in an- 
other note payable at his option ? And who would 
have advanced money to the government and taken 
bonds payable in twenty or fifty years in other 
promises to pay, with no assurance or pledge that 
the lender should ever get the dollars ? Nobody. 
The money of the country was willing to trust the 
government and risk its ability to pay, but it never 
would have accepted less than the faith of the na- 
tion that good actual dollars would be paid. Or 
at least it did not take anj'thing less than that. 
The pledge is to pay dollars, and a dollar is a cer- 



362 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

tain quantity of gold or silver, as I have shown in 
a previous paper. There is no precedent of the 
treasury, and nothing in the transaction itself, or 
in the law, to warrant the assumption that the 
promise in the bonds contemplated anything but 
coin. 

Much more preposterous is the idea that the bar- 
gain of the government with the bondtakers con- 
templated payment in stuff to be called dollars, to 
be invented afterwards, to be legislated into dollars 
out of nothing, without any intrinsic value, and 
without as much as a promise to pay dollars or any 
other value ; stuff that never was known in the 
history of the world to be used as money, that can- 
not have any attribute of money, and cannot be 
used as money, and its only effect, if attempted, 
would be to repudiate the indebtedness. 

4. — THE TAX QUESTION. 

The non-taxability of the bonds is held up as a 
considerable oppression upon the poor working 
men — non-property holders. The total fallacy of 
that hue and c^ will be apparent from the single 
fact that the non-property holder is not taxed a cent 
the more, directly or indirectly, by reason that the 
bonds are not taxed, so that it makes no difference 
whatever to him whether they are taxed or not. In 
proof of this it is only necessary to bear in mind 
the fact that the taxes that the said bonds would be 
liable to if they had not been made exempt from 
taxation, are State, county, and municipal direct 



THE BONDS AND BONDHOLDERS. 363 

taxes upon the property of the country, and not 
taxes upon poverty or indirect taxes upon con- 
sumption. So that whether such exemption be 
right or wrong, it is not a question between labor 
and capital, or between wealth and poverty, but 
simply between property holders themselves. 

And it is not a question between large property 
holders and small ones — not between wealthy peo- 
ple and those of small means ; for the bonds are 
not owned exclusively by the rich any more than 
is other property. While some industrious, thrifty 
people own small amounts of real estate or other 
taxable property, others own small amounts of 
government bonds — even as low as fifty dollars. 
Bondholding is not a class privilege. Whatever of 
advantage there may be in it is accessible to every 
person who can raise as much as fifty dollars. 

But let us see exactly how it is between bond- 
holders and other property holders — how it was at 
first and how it is now. I have shown how the 
bonds were created, what for, and what the bargain 
was. It is not to be denied that the bonding 
scheme intended to make the terms so that the 
money holders of the country could afford to buy 
them — so far as it was in power of the government 
to do so. And the exemption from taxation was 
one of the conditions of the bargain — then sup- 
posed to be a necessary condition to induce the 
people to buy them. Or at any rate, if it is now 
supposed that the bargain was especially a good 



364 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETO. 

one for the buyers, the chance was open to every- 
body who had any money or property. They were 
not offered to a selected class of Shylocks who 
were to have the exclusive privilege of being 
bloated bondholders. All kinds of property were 
then saleable at high prices ior money, and any 
man, woman or child who had any kind of property 
had the privilege of buying the bonds — everybody 
at the same price — and reap all the advantages of 
exemption from taxation, gold interest, gold princi- 
pal and all, exactly according to the terms held 
out. That is the way it was in the beginning, and 
anybody can see that the bond buyers then had no 
advantage over those who did. not buy them. 

How is it now ? We have seen that in view of 
the great risk that the bond buyers were taking 
during the war, the bargain was not especially a 
good one for them. Even the most astute Shylock 
could not know whether the bonds would be worth 
anything in the future or not. But the war ter- 
minated in our favor, the risk of loss is over, (ex- 
cept the risk of this greenback scheme of repudia- 
tion ;) the bonds are worth their face and more ; it 
has resulted in a good bargain for the original takers 
or any who took them before the war was over. 
Those who were patriotic enough to buy at the 
hazard have profited by it. Those who thus bought 
and have kept them are fully entitled to all the 
gains that the terms of the bonds gives them ; those 
who have sold are entitled to all the profit that 



THE BONDS AND BONDHOLDERS. 365 

they realized — entitled to all that exactly as the 
farmer is entitled to the market price for his wheat, 
or the working man to his day's wages. 

And now how stands the matter ? The bonds 
have assumed their level of value, so to speak, in 
the markets of the world, the same as any other 
property , in view of all the advantages attached to 
them. Non-taxability, gold interest, etc., ail go to 
make up their value in the market. The present 
holders, mostly, are second-hand purchasers, and 
not original takers. These have sold and made 
the profits of the rise. Those have bought at what 
the property is worth with all its advantages, and 
with the risk eliminated from the bargain. It is 
always in the market for sale and accessible to all, 
at the market price. There is no exclusive and 
privileged class of bondholders. The bonds are 
an established property accessible to everybody, 
exactly as in any other property ; and the rich 
greenbacker who thinks it is more profitable prop- 
erty to own than any other, has just the same op- 
portunity to own it as others ; the poorer green- 
backer has exactly the same chance according to 
his means. If it is more profitable to hold a few 
hundred dollars in bonds than in a house and lot, 
or in a mortgage, or any other species of property, 
it is his privilege to own the bonds. And as to 
those who own nothing and pay no taxes, I cannot 
see that they are affected in one way or the other 
by this bond tax question. 



366 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

And whatever advantage the exemption may be 
to the bondholder now, when we consider that the 
taxpayer, large or small, as a constituent of the 
government, and a part of the contracting power, 
received a full equivalent in advance for this ad- 
ditional tax that he is paying now, in the bargain, 
in the dark days of the rebellion, when the money 
was borrowed, in the price received, or the rate of 
interest, just as the seller of a farm would get a 
better price by agreeing to pay the taxes upon it 
for a series of years ; when all this is considered it 
is easy enough to see that this feature of the bond 
transaction, instead of being a great wrong, has 
really been as advantageous to the government and 
to the taxpayers as any other of the measures by 
which we have been saved a country. 

5. — CLAMORS ANSWERED. 

All the clamors about the bonds being an inven- 
tion for the benefit of money men, and all the crit- 
icisms as to the processes through which they orig- 
inated, are conclusively answered by the unques- 
tionable facts that somehow they represent the 
solid values received by the government of some- 
body and consumed in the war for the salvation of 
the government, and that in all the history of the 
world no war of equal magnitude was ever prose- 
cuted more successfully as it respects its financial 
department, or more economically in that depart- 
ment where the expense of it was honestly paid. 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 36 T 

Reader, there are many burdens to be borne in 
this life, of which the payment of honest indebt- 
edness is supposed to be one; but when we have 
had the value for it, it ought not to be esteemed a 
burden at all. Whatever of burden this public 
debt may be, we cannot afford to do less than to 
redeem theTnational pledges to the letter and in the 
spirit of the contract ; for with nations as with in- 
dividuals, honesty is always the best policy, 
whether we have any conscience in it or not. 

I close this chapter with a quotation from Presi- 
dent Washington : 

" There is no truth more thoroughly established, 
than that there exists in the economy and course of 
nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and hap- 
piness, between duty and advantage, between the gen* 
uine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy 
and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.' 1 



VIII. 

WEALTH AND ITS USES. 

Communism — How wealth is produced — Interest 
on capital — What the use of money is worth — 
Inflation cannot reduce interest — Concluding 
address to workiny men — Conclusion. 



1. — COMMUNISM. 

I do not suppose it is necessary to discuss the 
question of the right of property. I shall not 
make an argument to prove that where we see two 
young men start out in life together, with equal 



368 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

opportunities, working in the same shop it may be ; 
or in a store, or on farms, or in any other occupa- 
tion, no matter what ; one economizes and saves 
every dollar of his earnings not necessary for his 
comfortable support, working on from year to 
year, and putting his money where it will earn him 
something all along, until, in a course of years he 
finds himself the owner of a few thousands of 
dollars worth of honest property ; while the other 
has expended all his earnings as he went along ; 
so that one is comfortably above board, and the 
other penniless ; I say I shall not make any argu- 
ment to prove that such inequality of property is 
not any fault or any wrong on the part of that 
successful man, or any fault or short-coming on 
the part of the government, or of any body else 
but that spendthrift man himself, or that there is 
not or cannot be any cure for such a state of things 
otherwise than for every body to save a part of 
their earnings and put it to use for their future 
benefit. It is not necessary to argue this ; but I 
do say that the lives of those two men, thus briefly 
pointed out, represent, respectively, the funda- 
mental factors of the wealth and the poverty of 
the world, with all that each implies. 

The fact is not to be disguised that there is 
extant in this country more or less of the spirit of 
French and German communism ; arraying the 
poor against the rich, not only, but arraying the 
shiftless, dissipated, unworthy, slumocracy against 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 

all property holders, large and small; teaching that 
accumulated wealth is accumulated wickedness, 
that the money lords should be crushed out some- 
how, that interest on money be}^ond one or two 
per cent, per annum is especially unjust and 
oppressive, and on the whole, that the property 
holders are the cause of all the poverty and desti- 
tution in the land ; by all of which, thousands of 
well-disposed people are dangerously deluded. 

And so I deem it appropriate to conclude this 
book with a little chapter on the fundamental facts 
of the creation and use of wealth. 

2. — HOW WEALTH IS PRODUCED. 

A young man goes into the wilderness to make 
himself a home and a living for himself and family. 
He chops down the trees of the forest, subdues the 
ground and cultivates it, persevering, 3^ear after 
year, in his vigorous industry and self-denying 
economy, until, at the end of twenty years, he finds 
himself the possessor of a farm of a hundred acres, 
in a high state of cultivation, with an ample and 
luxurious habitation, with fruits and meadows, and 
all desirable stock and implements for large and 
almost spontaneous production of many of the 
necessaries and luxuries of life. It is a living for 
himself and his family. He has paid the price of 
that land as it was in a state of nature. He has 
made the improvements. It is his, and it is as 
nearly a paradise as this world's goods can make. 
24 



370 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

He may do with it as he will. He may continue 
to occupy it and work it with his own hands, or 
hire others to work it for him, or rent it for a share 
of the products, or for money rent, or sell it for 
money, or for a mortgage, or give it away. What- 
ever he does with it nobody is injured by it. There 
is not a respectable working man so ignorant and 
so reckless as not to admit all this to be so. This 
is wealth. 

3. — INTEREST ON CAPITAL. 

Now, as old age begins to creep along upon this 
man, he thinks he can afford to take the world 
easier. A young man comes along, starting out in 
life with his bare hands, to hew his way through 
the world. And on looking that farm over, he sees 
that he can better afford to take it, with the stock 
and implements, all ready at hand for the easy pro- 
duction of large values, and give the owner a con- 
siderable share of the produce, or pay him a money 
rent, than to start in the forest as that owner did. 
And so they strike a bargain ; the young man takes 
the farm, with the stock and tools, and the old man 
retires. Or the young man buys it all, and gives a 
bond and mortgage at such price, and with such 
interest annually as he finds, on a fair computation 
of the income of the property, that he can better 
afford to pay than to commence life in any other 
way. In either case the old man lives in idleness, 
if he so chooses, on the income from that property. 
And that old man is called a pauper, living upon 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 31 1 

the labor of the young man. This is interest of 
money eating up one-half or three-quarters of the 
earnings of industry. This is capital oppressing 
labor. This is the rich robbing the poor. That 
old man has no right to live in idleness, with that 
young man to bring his bread and butter to him. 
He has no right to any of the corn that the young 
man raises by his honest toil, or to interest money 
wrung from the sweat of his brow. All this is 
sought to be abolished somehow, 

I will not argue the merits of this process. This 
practical illustration of the production and enjoy- 
ment of property in its simplest form is sufficient. 
Anybody can understand it. And this illustration 
will apply to all other phases of interest or rent pay- 
ing, for they are both substantially one ; they are 
both compensation for the use of values previously 
produced by labor, and generally used for the pro- 
duction of other values and indispensable for their 
profitable production. It matters not whether 
such borrowed values are taken in the shape of 
money, farms, shops, tools, or what not, or whet her 
the borrower deals directly with the man who ac- 
tually made them, or earned them, the same princi- 
ple is at the bottom of it all. They have cost the 
labor of somebody, the use of them is worth some- 
thing, and the borrower can better afford to pay 
what he agrees to pay for their use than to go 
without them, or wait till he can produce them 
himself; it is the better for him that somebody has 



372 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

accumulated them ; and the more of them in the 
market for hire the cheaper will be the interest or 
rent, as we shall see further on. 

To go back to our farmer illustration. In course 
of time the old farmer dies, and that interest pay- 
ing fund of his falls into the hands of an only son, 
who is now quite rich, and with reasonable pru- 
dence is able to live a life of idleness. What dif- 
ference does that make to the young man who pays 
that interest ? If he was not impoverished or in- 
jured by paying the old man for the use of the 
property, he surely will not be by paying to the 
son. If as industrious and economical as the old 
man was, he will own the whole in due time ; if not 
it is a good thing for him to have the use by paying 
for it, so long as he can do no better. So that the 
accumulation of property and the paying for 
its use, by borrowers, cannot possibly be any 
injury to any body. Of course people sometimes 
make mistakes in this, as in any other matters of 
business, and lose money by borrowing; but in 
general it is to be supposed that every man knows 
his own business, and what is for his own interest, 
and will not borrow capital when not profitable to 
him, any more than he will buy a horse or a steam 
engine when not profitable. And so this matter will 
always regulate itself ; when borrowed capital is like- 
ly to be injurious to borrowers they will let it alone. 
The remedy is always in their own hands. There 
cannot possibly be any power in wealth to oppress 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 313 

them in this matter of interest. They can always 
be just as independent of the money power, as they 
call it, as if all wealth were extinguished and we 
were to begin down on the plane of barbarism. 
Everybody is free to begin there who wishes to, 
and the wealth of other people need not hurt them 
at all. They have only to let it alone. 

4. — WHAT THE USE OF MONEY IS WORTH. 

But the rates of interest are too high, we are 
told, and we are entertained with elaborate figure 
work to show how many days' labor are expended 
to pay the interest on borrowed capital ; but they 
forget to estimate how many more days' work every 
borrower would have to do than now were it not 
for the help that the borrowed tools gives him. 

As to the price for the use of a farm, or for the 
money to buy it with, or for a shop and tools, or 
the money to buy them with, or for any other form 
of hired capital — all resolving themselves substan- 
tially into interest of inoney — it is safe enough for 
every man to make his own bargains, precisely the 
same as in any matter of traffic. As we have here- 
tofore seen, no man will pay interest when he can- 
not afford it, and the same rule will apply to the 
rates ; and if the individual interest payers profit 
by paying interest, the country at large cannot lose 
by it, whatever the rates may be. 

The real intrinsic value of the use of capital 
cannot be ascertained with much precision. It is 
always much more than its exchangeable value, or 



374 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

the interest paid for it. The real value to the 
borrower is what he can produce with it, in excess 
of what he could produce without it. 

To put this matter in the clearest light, to show 
what the use of capital is worth — imagine a man 
going out upon a prairie to make his living, with 
nothing but his naked hands to do it with, and no 
way of getting any implements but to borrow two 
dollars to buy a spade and a hoe. A man comes 
along and offers to lend him $2 and there is no 
other person who will do it. What can he afford 
to pay for the use of $2 for a year rather than do 
without it ? We cannot know exactly but it is 
surely within bounds to say that he can better af- 
ford to pay $5 as interest, or two hundred and 
fifty per cent., than to dig up the soil with his 
hands and such natural aids as he can find. There 
is, then, a real intrinsic value in the use of $2, of 
not less than $5 for one year. 

Then the next year the capitalist comes along 
again and offers to lend this farmer $100 to buy a 
mule and a plow. With these aids he can produce 
about ten times as much as before. Now, it would 
be quite a moderate estimate to say that he can 
better afford to pay fifty per cent, interest for that 
$100 for a year than to do without the mule and 
plow. 

But no such prices are paid for the use of money. 
Why ? Because there is so much capital accumu- 
lated, beyond the immediate wants of its owners, 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 375 

and seeking investment for hire, that the competi- 
tion brings the price down vastly below the intrin- 
sic value. 

For further illustration : It is not to be presum- 
ed that our young farmer first alluded to would 
agree to pay rent or interest on that farm that 
would not leave him the better for it. And exact- 
ly so with all other phases of interest or rent. 
Brick Pomeroy can better afford to pay large in- 
terest on the capital required to print his pestilent 
papers to the best advantage than to print them on 
the old ramage press of fifty years ago. Our mer- 
chants can better afford to pay three or four hun- 
dred dollars a year for a good store room than to 
put their goods into slab shanties. A young be- 
ginner can better afford to pay a high rate of in- 
terest on money to buy horses and plows, and 
mowing machines, and other improved implements 
than to dig up his soil with a spade, and cut his 
crops with a jack-knife, etc. And exactly so with 
all other phases of labor and business. It is clear- 
ly the better for the poor beginners that somebody 
has accumulated wealth to lend to them on inter- 
est, or rent, or whatever you please to call it, at 
such rates as they can agree upon. The money 
paid for the use of capital is just as advantageous 
to the payer as is that paid by the farmer for his 
seed wheat, by the blacksmith for his iron, or the 
shoemaker for his leather. And if the receiver of 
interest lives in idleness it is none the worse for 



3?6 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

the working men. If one-half of the working men 
could at once be transformed into millionaires, the 
wages of the other half would not be any the less, 
surely. It would be just as sensible to clamor 
against merchants' bills, doctors' bills, mechanics' 
bills, and working men's wages, as against the pay- 
ment of interest on borrowed capital. 

5. — INFLATION WILL NOT REDUCE INTEREST 

But the greenback policy — inflation — making 
money plenty and cheap — will reduce the rates of 
interest, we are told. This is another of the wild 
fallacies of uniformed teachers. I have demon- 
strated in a previous paper how it is that the value 
of money always diminishes as its volume increases, 
so that with an inflation of the currency the 
quantity of money required to do any business is 
increased in proportion to the increase oi 
currency. 

Now suppose the currency to be doubled with 
good money. As it will then require twice as 
much money to do the work and business of the 
country as before, the demand for money to loan 
will be double what it was before. There will be 
twice the amount of money in the hands of lenders 
to lend, and twice as much wanted by borrow- 
ers ; so that the rate of interest must remain 
exactly the same, for the reason that the relative 
supply and demand remain the same. 

The rate of interest is governed by the amount 
of real capital — wealth — that is in the market for 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 37T 

hire ; and this does not depend on the quantity of 
circulating medium. This may be doubled without 
increasing the real wealth of the community at all. 
But it does depend on the improved farms, the 
buildings, and property of all kinds that is in 
excess of the immediate wants of their owners. 
The more of all this the lower is the rate of inter- 
est, or rent. Referring again to the farmer illus- 
tration: when the young man comes along to hire 
that farm, if there should be two such properties 
for rent, and only one applicant, the rate would be 
low ; but if only one farm and two applicants the 
rent would be higher ; so that the more property 
unemployed by the owners, the more people 
able to live upon the income of their property, the 
more wealth in proportion to the number of 
people who work for their living and hire money 
or property, the lower the rate of interest. Accord- 
ingly it is notorious that in the older settled and 
richer portions of our country the rate of interest 
is lower than in the newer localities where less of 
wealth is accumulated. 

For authority on this point I will here quote 
from " Say's Political Economy:" 

" The more abundant is the disposable capital, in 
proportion to the multiplicity of its employments, the 
lower will the interest of borrowed capital fall. With 
regard to the supply of disposable capital, that must 
depend on the quantum of previous savings." — Page 
349. 

" Capital, at the moment of lending, commonly 
assumes the form of money ; whence it has been 
inferred that abundance of money is the same thing 



378 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

as abundance of capital; and, consequently, that 
abundance of money is what lowers the rate of 
interest. The fact is, that abundance or scarcity of 
money, or its substitute, whatever it may be, no more 
affects the rate of interest, than abundance or scarcity 
of cinnamon, of wheat, or of silk." — Page 350. 

" The glut or scarcity of the commodity lent only 
affects its relative price to other commodities, and has 
no influence whatever on the rate of interest, upon its 
advance or loan. Thus, when silver money lost three- 
fourths of its former relative value, although four 
times as much of it was necessary to pass a loan of the 
same extent of capital, the rate of interest remained 
unaltered. The quantity of specie or money in the 
market, might increase ten fold without multiplying 
the quantity of disposable, or circulation capital." — 
p. 353. 

It is quite clear therefore, that interest paying 
is not oppressive, per se, to any body, that the rate 
of interest will always regulate itself justly by the 
laws of supply and demand, exactly as the prices 
of corn or other commodities adjust themselves, 
and that the accumulation of capital by some peo- 
ple, and lending it to others for hire, is indispensa- 
ble to any progress or improvement, nay to civili- 
zation itself; for it is self-evident that nobody 
would care to accumulate any values for others to 
use if no compensation could be had for their use. 

6. — CONCLUDING ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN. 

Now, in conclusion, a further word to working 
men. Nothing can be more senseless than for you 
to set up antagonism to wealth. Every one of you 
can accumulate some of it if you will ; if you will 
not, your interest is identical with that of the 
wealth that runs the industries where you expect 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 379 

always to get a livelihood. But the theory seems 
to be : extinguish the money lords, crush out the 
men who own anything, then the working men will 
have plenty of work, big wages, short hours, cheap 
goods ; in other words, universal luxury flowing to 
them with very little effort. It is a fallacy, a fraud 
upon honest working men. It cannot be done. 
Working men in good positions would do much 
better for themselves by extra exertions to pro- 
mote their employers' interests than by engaging 
in these crusades to pull them down. 

There is no necessary antagonism between labor 
and capital — between the working man and the 
man that hires him. There is no antagonism be- 
tween them, only the common self-interests of the 
race that is indispensable to its self-preservation 
and the perpetuity — the selfishness that properly in. 
cites every one to take care of his or her own in 
terests ; that impels the farmer to sell his products as 
high as he and can buy his necessaries as cheaply as 
he can, and the merchant to buy his goods as cheaply, 
and sell them as dearly as he can, and the manu- 
facturer to buy his labor and materials as cheaply 
as he can, and the working man to work as little 
and get as much pay for it as he can, and the man 
of money to get all for his money that he can. 
There is no more antagonism between a rich man 
and a laborer, than between the merchant and his 
customer, or between the farmer and the black- 
smith. And then, when we come to the question 



380 LABOR, CAPITAL, MONEY, ETC. 

of the wealth that runs industrial enterprises, and 
the muscle that does the work, as a matter of class 
interest, the interest of the one is eminently iden- 
tical with that of the other ; evidently so to all 
who will take the trouble to think. Every working 
man knows that the wealth that builds the shops 
and the machinery, and implements for manufactur- 
ing enterprises, and buys the materials, and pays 
the wages, is only accumulated labor — labor per- 
formed by somebody, and in this country more 
usually by the owners of it, who are the owners of 
such enterprises ; and when not so it is procured 
upon their credit. And without such accumulated 
labor — wealth- — there would be no hiring of labor, 
and no manufacturing labor done in any other 
way. In fact the accumulation of capital is the 
fundamental factor of civilization. 

And then it follows : that the essential interest 
of working men requires, 

1st, That somebody should accumulate capital, 
and the more of it the better, for the more the 
capital the more and the greater variety of indus- 
tries ; 

2nd, That such capital shall be invested in in- 
dustrial enterprises to the greatest possible extent ; 

3rd, That such industries shall be profitable to 
their owners ; for otherwise they cannot continue 
to exist : and consequently, 

4th, That working men, everywhere, should 
strive, in all ways, to promote the success of their 



WEALTH AND ITS USES. 381 

employers, instead of engaging in a factious opposi- 
tion to them, as a class, political or otherwise. 

*l, — CONCLUSION. 

In conclusion of the whole matter of this book, 
reader, in my studies of the many topics herein 
discussed, and in writing down my conclusions, 
with my own experience and observation where 
applicable, and in presenting them in this form, if 
I have succeeded in imparting to you any instruc- 
tion by which you will be made the better — more 
prosperous, more happy through life, my object is 
accomplished. 

FINIS. 



